May 2015

■ INSIDE: MEDICAL AND EDUCATION SPECIAL SECTIONS

A World of News and Perspective

EDUCATION ■ A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

■ May 2015

The George Washington University

by Karin Zeitvogel

■ VOLUME 22, NUMBER 5

HOT ■ MAY 2015 NEW PROGRAMS

■ WWW.WASHDIPLOMAT.COM

UNITED STATES

In February 2011, University of California-Los Angeles professor Cristina Tirado made an alarming announcement at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, D.C.

Despite Deniers, Climate Change Spurs Specialized Higher Degrees

UMBRELLAS PUT AWAY? “In 2020, the U.N. has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees,” she said.

“Already, Africans are going in small droves up to Spain, Germany and from different countries wherever in the Mediterranean region, but we’re going to see many, many more trying to go north when food stress comes in, ” she warned.

Just before Tirado spoke at the AAAS conference, food shortages had people of Tunisia and Egypt pushed the “over the top,” sparking the Arab Spring, she said.

Who or what was the chief culprit behind the political upheaval, the mass

State Department Tries To Counter the Online Islamic State Narrative

outflow of migrants from Africa, shortages? According to Tirado the food academics on the AAAS panel, and other it was climate change.

Since the AAAS talk, historical ture records keep being shattered.temperaThe year 2014, for example, was the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1880.

Meteorological Organization The World also out that 14 of the 15 warmest points years on record all took place in the 21st century.

Yet there are still politicians in Washington who roll their eyes heavenward (and see no rain if they’re in California) at the scientific consensus that has emerged

on climate change. Or they’d point to snow Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.):“The somewhere to refute the climate is idea that the always changing. planet is warming (climate change, inciden- The question The climate is never static. tally, causes changing weather is whether it’s caused by patterns, not man-made activity and whether it justifies just heat waves). To some, the very notion economically that climate change exists destructive government regis preposterous. ulation. ” Others insist that it is a naturally occurring Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.): “[Scientists] phenomenon that cannot be blamed on, or making are up their facts to fit their stopped by, human activity. concluTo think that it sions. They’ve can change the geopolitical already caught them doing shape of the this.” planet is unlikely, in their minds.

Sen. Ron Johnson Before the 2010 congressional (R-Wis.): “I absolutely elections do not believe that swept Republicans into that the science of manthe majority in caused climate change is proven. the U.S. House, the Climatesight.org Not by blog any stretch of the compiled a list of statements imagination. I think it’s about climate far more likely that it’s just sunspot change by some of the GOP activity, candidates, or something several of whom have now declared their time where just in the geologic eons of candidacy for the White House we have changes in the clinext year, or mate.” are expected to.

Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Texas):“Today, Here’s what these presidential the globhave said about climate change: prospects

Continued on next page

May 2015

EDUCATION

The Washington Diplomat

It was never going to be easy for the U.S. to counter the toxic online narrative of the Islamic State, an amorphous terror group that can enlist legions of sympathizers to trumpet its murderous cause. Yet experts say this virtual tug of war can have a tangible impact on the ground, if done right. PAGE 6

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Clement C.M. Leung, Hong Kong’s economic and trade commissioner to the U.S., is confident an electoral reform package will soon pass without sparking more “Umbrella Movement” protests that marred the reputation of this financial hub, known for its freewheeling politics and orderly business. PAGE 11

EURASIA

Russia’s Defenders Blame NATO, U.S. for Ukraine’s Civil War

culture

Death Revisited In ‘Divine’ Show If you’ve visited the National Museum of African Art and been impressed, it’s time to go again and be transported to “Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited.”

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PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES

Cuba Expert Praises Historic Détente

Wife’s Nonprofit Work Helps Fellow Filipinos From rebuilding after Typhoon Haiyan, to nurturing young leaders, to giving the public a rare glimpse of gold treasures, Maria Victoria “Vicky” Jose Cuisia, wife of Philippine Ambassador Jose L. Cuisia Jr., works

Julia Sweig, a respected Cuba expert, says Obama’s historic normalization of ties with Havana after over 50 years of hostility has removed a deep stain in Washington’s relations with Latin America that “clogged and poisoned the discussions for so many decades.” PAGE 4

nonstop for her fellow Filipinos. PAGE 31

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Most U.S. news articles about the crisis in Ukraine have one or two lines that mention Moscow’s unhappiness with the expansion of NATO since the end of the Cold War. But for Russia, that one line tells the whole story. PAGE 8

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May 2015

CONTENTS THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

14 Environmental studies programs

[ news ]

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#ISlAMIC STATE vS. STATE DEPArTMENT

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Russians, not surprisingly, have a very different narrative of Ukraine’s civil war and the provocations that led up to it — grievances that go back to the end of the Cold War.

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Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement” may have died down, but the debate over whether the prized Chinese territory will be able to freely elect its leaders in 2017 is alive and well.

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DIPlOMACy ON ThE GO What do diplomats’ cars say about them and the country they represent? Quite a lot actually.

COvEr: Commissioner’s photo taken at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office by Lawrence Ruggeri.

[ medical ] 27

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EbOlA MIxED bAG The Ebola epidemic is finally on the wane. The bad news?

Researchers testing potential vaccines for the deadly disease, which has killed more than 10,000 people, may not have enough patients to study.

DIPlOMATIC SPOuSES From disaster relief and young leaders to gold treasures and fashion, Maria Victoria “Vicky” Jose Cuisia, wife of the Philippine ambassador, works nonstop for her fellow Filipinos.

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COlD WAr ‘ExPrESIóN’ “Libertad de Expresión: The Art Museum of the Americas and Cold War Politics” is a timely exhibition on a conflict whose echoes resonate to this day.

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DEGrEES Of DESIGN From the deserts of the Middle East to the fjords of Greenland, “HOT TO COLD” explores how a Danish firm’s designs are shaped by the surrounding culture and climate.

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DINING Restaurateur Nora Pouillon was showing Washingtonians how to go organic long before it became a dining prerequisite.

blACK bElT IN PEACE Karate is teaching kids tools for peace-building and diplomacy, one punch and high kick at a time.

COvEr PrOfIlE: hONG KONG

‘DIvINE’ INTErPrETATIONS “The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited

by Contemporary African Artists” is a sprawling, compelling reflection on the afterlife.

WArMING TO ThE IDEA Politicians may be ignoring climate change, but students are not — and universities are taking heed with a slew of environmental studies programs.

WATErWAy TO NOWhErE? The Chinese plan to bankroll what could become the world’s most expensive civil engineering project in a country where they don’t even have an embassy.

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[ education ] 21

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GlObAl vANTAGE POINT After 20 years of economic stagnation and a decade of political malaise, Shinzo Abe is trying to usher Japan back into the role of central actor on the world stage.

ruSSIA’S SIDE Of STOry

[ culture ]

Pr PrOS In this information age, mastering public relations can make or break organizations — including embassies, many of whom realize the value of good PR.

The U.S. is devoting more resources to countering the Islamic State’s toxic narrative online, but establishing credibility in the social media sphere is but one part of a successful counterterrorism strategy.

Danish design

ESTONIA’S E-rESIDENCy Estonia’s “e-residency” program gives foreigners the innovative perks enjoyed by residents of this small Baltic country, known as the tech capital of Europe.

PEOPlE Of WOrlD INfluENCE Respected scholar and author Julia Sweig says the historic thaw in hostilities between the U.S. and Cuba has removed a deep stain in Washington’s relations with Latin America.

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Diplomats’ cars

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May 2015

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fIlM rEvIEWS The British thriller “Ex Machina” breathtakingly portrays how a humanoid robot uneasily treads the gulf between being a machine and desiring to be human.

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CINEMA lISTING

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EvENTS lISTING

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DIPlOMATIC SPOTlIGhT

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APPOINTMENTS / WOrlD hOlIDAyS

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P.O. Box 1345 • Silver Spring, MD 20915-1345 • Phone: (301) 933-3552 • Fax: (301) 949-0065 • E-mail: news@washdiplomat.com • Web: www.washdiplomat.com Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Victor Shiblie Director of Operations Fuad Shiblie Managing Editor Anna Gawel News Editor Larry Luxner Contributing Writers Sarah Alaoui, Michael Coleman, Elena Goukassian, Stephanie Kanowitz, Sean Lyngaas, Molly McCluskey, Ky N. Nguyen, Gail Scott, Dave Seminara, Gina Shaw, Gary Tischler, Lisa Troshinsky, Joshua W. Walker, Karin Zeitvogel Photographer Lawrence Ruggeri Account Managers Rod Carrasco Graphic Designer Cari Henderson The Washington Diplomat is published monthly by The Washington Diplomat, Inc. The newspaper is distributed free of charge at several locations throughout the Washington, D.C. area. We do offer subscriptions for home delivery. Subscription rates are $29 for 12 issues and $49 for 24 issues. Call Fuad Shiblie for past issues. If your organization employs many people from the international community you may qualify for free bulk delivery. To see if you qualify you must contact Fuad Shiblie.

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May 2015

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PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE

Julia Sweig

Cuba Expert on Obama’s Détente With One-Time Foe: It’s About Time

by Michael Coleman

P

resident Barack Obama’s historic meeting with Raúl Castro in Panama last month didn’t produce a widely expected announcement that the U.S. would remove Cuba from its list of states that support terrorism. But three days later, on an otherwise slow April 14 news day, the White House did, indeed, proclaim it would strike Cuba from its inventory of international terror sponsors (only Sudan, Iran and Syria now remain on the list).

The de-listing removed a deep stain on the Latin American nation’s international reputation and helps smooth a path toward normalized diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba after more than 50 years of hostility.

The official White House press release announcing the president’s executive action came in the middle of The Washington Diplomat’s interview with Julia Sweig, a respected expert on Cuban-American affairs, the author of the best-selling book “Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know” and a former director of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sweig told The Diplomat that the first formal meeting of Cuban and American presidents in over half a century during the Summit of the Americas in Panama was hugely symbolic and opened the door to a raft of expected changes in policy between the two nations, including the removal of Cuba from the terrorism list and the eventual opening of embassies in Washington and Havana. Obama’s executive action days after the summit cemented the importance of the meeting, she said.

“It finally takes the issue off of the table, where it had clogged and poisoned the discussions for so many decades — at least the last two — and hurt America’s standing in Latin America so drastically,” Sweig said as she perused a White House email announcing the decision.

“This is a major historic event.”

The United States designated Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism in the 1980s in reaction to its backing of leftist insurgent groups in Latin America. Cuba has also har-

publicly with Castro — not only bodes well for Cuban-American relations, but for America’s reputation across Latin America.

“Latin America — and I mean all of Latin America; there are no exceptions here — has repeated the same message to Washington going back at least to [former U.S. President] George W. Bush: That having embargoes and sanctions against Cuba, and this dyspeptic relationship, was an impediment to American credibility as a 21st-century partner in Latin America,” Sweig explained.

“Now, the political will is there and I expect to see more in the next two years — much more,” predicted Sweig, who recently became a senior research fellow with the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

The first major signs of a thaw in the longstanding deep freeze in Cuban-U.S. relations came in December when Obama made a speech calling for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations — a “new chapter” for the former Cold War adversaries, as he described it. The American president also announced several new executive decisions, including the easing of limits on remittances from the U.S. to Cuba and a relaxation of rules governing U.S. citizens’ travel to the Caribbean country. (Obama Latin America — and I mean all of Latin America; does not have the power, though, to end the 1962 trade embargo, there are no exceptions here — has repeated the same which only Congress can lift.) message to Washington going back at least to [former U.S. The removal of Cuba from the U.S. terrorist list also paves the way President] George W. Bush: That having embargoes and for Washington and Havana to reopen embassies in each other’s sanctions against Cuba, and this dyspeptic relationship, capitals, although the Obama administration has said that Cuba was an impediment to American credibility as a 21stfirst needs to let American diplocentury partner in Latin America. mats travel around the country freely and cannot keep tabs on — Julia Sweig, senior research fellow at the University of Texas in Austin Cubans who visit the U.S. Embassy. bored a number of dangerous U.S. fugitives, including “We will end an outdated approach that for decades Charlie Hill, who is accused in the 1971 murder of a New has failed to advance our interests,” Obama said in his Mexico policeman before fleeing to Cuba on an airliner December speech.“Neither the American nor the Cuban hijacked from the Albuquerque airport. people are well-served by a rigid policy that is rooted in But leaders from Latin America said the designation events that took place before most of us were born.” always had more to do with politics than facts — and Obama also suggested that time heals wounds, noting populist presidents from Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and that the U.S. and Vietnam — a communist country like elsewhere held it up as an anachronistic symbol of Cuba that engaged in a fierce war against the U.S. — Yankee imperialism. today have enjoyed 20 years of normal relations.

Sweig said the White House decision to take Cuba off “Through these changes, we intend to create more the terror list — as well as Obama’s willingness to meet opportunities for the American and Cuban people, and

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Photo: University of Texas, Austin

begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas,” Obama said.

Not everyone in Washington cheered news of the historic meeting or Cuba’s removal from the terror list.That includes many older members of Cuba’s exile community in Florida, a powerful voting bloc that still remembers fleeing the communist island when Fidel Castro took power. Rep. John Boehner, the Republican House majority leader from Ohio, said he was “disappointed” in the developments, while Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican of Cuban descent, accused the White House of acting “only for political reasons and not in accordance with the law.”

“Since President Obama came into power, his administration’s policy toward the Castro regime has been: ask, and you shall receive,” said Ros-Lehtinen, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “But this unwise decision to remove Cuba from the list illustrates that the Obama administration is willing to concede to the demands of the Castro brothers in order to set up an embassy in Cuba.

“Removing Cuba from the terrorist list does not help the Cuban people, as they are still left oppressed and without even basic human rights while emboldening its oppressors,” she said.

But supporters of Obama’s rapprochement point out that the State Department terrorism designation deals with just that — terrorism, not human rights abuses, political prisoners or other issues that will be the subject of diplomatic talks.They also argue that half a century of isolation, not to mention various covert attempts at regime change, have failed to dislodge the Castros from May 2015

power. Opening the communist island to American ideas and investment, they say, would better help Cuba’s 11 million people.

Sweig said the inclusion of Cuba on the terrorism list has had dire implications for the country’s economy, preventing Havana from accessing the U.S. financial system. (Even Cuba’s Interests Section in Washington has to operate only in cash because banks won’t work with it).

“It is a significant disincentive not only to American trade and investment in Cuba but to trade and investment in Cuba generally,” she said, explaining how U.S. counter-terrorist measures related to banking and finance since Sept. 11, 2001, have hurt Cuba, even though the rules are primarily aimed at nations such as Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya. “Removing Cuba from the list will begin to take that stigma off and send a symbol to the international community that Cuba is becoming kosher, or is kosher, for foreign trade and investment.”

That’s not to say U.S. investors are planning the modern-day equivalent of a gold rush in the dilapidated country. Since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, about 60 percent of businesses propped up by foreign investment in Cuba have failed.The country’s tight-fisted regulatory environment poses major entrepreneurial hurdles. Further, the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 expanded the U.S. trade embargo, and only Congress has the authority to repeal that, a distant prospect, at best.

“For large-scale American capital investment in Cuba, Helms-Burton needs to be repealed or significantly changed,” Sweig said. “The legislature has to act. That’s why we heard the president say in the State of the Union [speech] that Congress needs to do its thing, too.”

Sweig said U.S. companies are naturally reticent about engaging with Cuba because of the longstanding rules and laws that disallowed it.

She suspects that will begin to change.

“If a couple of big business deals, or even small but symbolic and important deals, can be agreed to between American companies and Cuba, that is going to create momentum for further changes in the regulatory framework,” she said.“There are in a lot of places regulations I think that are purposely silent and that is a way of saying there is a grey area here, so go and explore and push the boundaries.

“I think the more that that happens it will create a kind of virtuous circle where more will be possible and the White House will do more on the regulatory side,” she added.

During Raúl Castro’s lengthy speech in Panama, Obama listened intently as the 83-yearold leader, who formally took over for his brother Fidel in 2008, outlined a litany of “imperialist aggression” by the United States. The former revolutionary referenced America’s “wars, conquests and interventions” in the region and said the U.S. had been a “hegemonic force that plundered territories throughout the Americas.”

Castro noted that Congress authorized military intervention in Cuba in the late 19th century and that a U.S. military base in Guantanamo still “occupies our territory.” Obama said recently that his failure to close the deeply controversial facility was one of the biggest regrets of his presidency. But while he criticized U.S. policy, Castro also absolved Obama of any responsibility for America’s past actions.

“I always appreciate the history lesson,” Obama said wryly after Castro’s speech.

Sweig said Castro’s pointed remarks were skillfully diplomatic. They spoke to deep, lingering resentments toward American intervention in Latin America — including helping to topple democratically elected regimes in the 1970s and 1980s — but also offered an olive branch.

“That history is very meaningful, so he was reciting it yet again in the presence of the president while at the same time apologizing to the president and absolving him of responsibility and saying, ‘Let’s move forward,’” she said. “[Obama] sat there and listened to it…. What really hit home to me in the body language and the statements over the last several days was that these two people have figured out how to

talk to one another.They are crystal clear about where they are going.

“They are actually getting to know one another … and they are managing their own publics and expectations,” she added.

Sweig also pointed out that for all of its geopolitical baggage and international isolation, Cuba is deeply respected in the realm of diplomacy, as was evidenced by its preparation and dynamic participation at meetings with U.S. officials in Havana last month. (Havana is also hosting peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels to end a decadeslong insurgency in that country).

“Cuba is known internationally as one of the most professional [diplomatic corps] anywhere,” she said. “Cuba has a long history of punching way above its weight, as it does in terms of having prominence for itself that is larger than what its island status and small population would suggest. Cuba was a founding member of the World Trade Organization, for example. There is this deep bench of experience with diplomacy there.”

Instead of focusing on detrimental Cuban behavior — human rights violations and sometimes brutal suppression of its political dissidents — Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have recently hailed the country for its work in disaster-relief zones.

Cuba is often a first responder to international crises. Its doctors and health workers were among the first in Liberia when the recent Ebola outbreak occurred, and the country was also on the scene in 2005 and 2010 when Pakistan and Haiti were rocked by devastating earthquakes. According to an academic analysis, Cuba sent more doctors to Ebola-stricken countries than the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and any other nation.

“Cuba’s greatest tool is probably in public health and medical diplomacy around the world — boots on the ground sending people to crisis places,” Sweig said, recalling how Fidel Castro even offered to send relief workers to help in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina but was rebuffed by the Bush administration.

“These are different times,” she said. “I think this administration, as the president said, recognizes there will continue to be disagreement on how we organize our societies, but where global cooperation is possible we ought to do it.

Cuba excels in the health field and the U.S. can’t be everywhere. It’s a real opportunity that pays real dividends outside of ideological battles.”

Turning the tables to domestic politics and the 2016 presidential race, Sweig said it’s too soon to predict how Cuba will play in the upcoming campaign. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is firmly on board with Obama’s push toward normalization. The Republican candidates are a bit less predictable.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, both Florida Republicans, are not supportive.

Florida has a long history of animosity toward the Cuban government, as the state has taken in thousands of Cuban refugees who fled Fidel Castro’s repressive regime. Cuban Americans in Florida have long tended to vote Republican in support of the party’s more hardline approach to Cuba, but that could be changing, especially among younger voters.

“The organic flow of people and money and stuff between Florida and Cuba is what is going to eventually change the politics of this issue in Florida,” Sweig said. “The Florida politicians are behind their own voters and public opinion among Cuban Americans has also shifted. You see travel, remittances, connecting back with their families and also the last several polls show a majority of Cuban Americans support some level of opening or lifting the travel ban for everybody at a minimum.

“Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have been adamant in their opposition to this,” she said,“but I think that’s more about campaign politics than it is about their own constituents.”

Michael Coleman (@michaelcoleman) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

May 2015

The Washington Diplomat Page 5

DIPLOMACy

Washington, D.C.

State Department Wages Online War To blunt Islamic State’s Momentum

by Sean lyngaas

I

t was never going to be easy for Washington and other governments to counter the toxic online narrative of the so-called Islamic State. The terror group is amorphous and can enlist any of its legions of sympathizers to trumpet its murderous cause.

Any counter-messaging campaign bearing the obvious stamp of a Western government looks suspicious and can lack credibility with potential recruits.

Yet communications experts say this online tug of war can, to a certain degree, affect the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria, and that it matters symbolically for U.S. relations with majority-Muslim countries.

“Trying to just find ways to inject counterbalancing information and perspective into the middle of these online networks is very important,” said Philip J. (P.J.) Crowley, a former State Department spokesman who is now a professor at the George Washington University’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. However, he added, “to the extent that that generates a debate and that pulls people back from the brink, those positions of influence are likely to be people [who] are far closer to individuals tempted by the Islamic State than we are.”

The State Department’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) is the tip of the spear for the U.S. propaganda war against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS).

The center predates the group’s burst onto the world stage in 2014;

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territorial advances and losses, to those describing disaffected fighters who have left the terror group, to apparent success stories of de-radicalization in Europe.

The CSCC Twitter account also goes beyond news regurgitation and does its own stylizing. In tweeting a story on young Canadians who joined the Islamic State, for example, the CSCC communications staff overlaid a photo of the suspects with a grim quote from one of their mothers lamenting the loss of her son to the group.

The CSCC account uses Twitter slang and appears to consider “trolling,” or targeting another account with disparaging tweets, part of its mandate.

The CSCC on one occasion tagged an apparent Islamic State sympathizer, whose account has since been suspended, with a tweet denouncing the terror group. “#ISIS is NOT the solution,” the tweet reads. “Its spread has worsened social ills — more homelessness, illness, starvation, poverty, death.”

The prominence of the State Department seal on the CSCC’s Twitter and YouTube accounts is another unsubtle aspect of the center’s approach to social media. Nearly all of the 16 videos CSCC has posted to its

We can’t just insert ourselves into the middle of that conversation; we have to earn a way into the middle of that conversation.

”

— PhiliP J. CroWlEy, former State Department spokesman President Barack Obama’s 2011 executive order setting guidance for CSCC focuses on countering al-Qaeda and its “affiliates.”Though it grew out of an al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State has morphed into something altogether and split off from its parent group.

With a reported budget of $5 million and staff of about 50, the CSCC has gone about trying to blunt the Islamic State’s online influence in part through Twitter. The paternalsounding “Think Again, Turn Away” account tweets everything from news stories warning of the Islamic State’s

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YouTube channel to date end with a “Think Again, Turn Away” caption and the State Department seal. That obvious branding can lessen the impact of a video with a good counter-narrative refuting the Islamic State’s religious credentials, according to Daniel Cohen, a research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank. Why would a potential Islamic State recruit listen to something that is so obviously U.S. government messaging, he asked.

CSCC staff faces an uphill battle not only in the quality of its messaging, but in the quantity as well. While Twitter

suspended the accounts of at least 1,000 Islamic State sympathizers between September and December 2014, there were at least 46,000 such accounts in existence during that time, according to a Brookings Institution study.

“We’re getting beaten on volume, so the only way to compete is by aggregating, curating and amplifying existing content,” Richard Stengel, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, told The New York Times in February. The article said CSCC would harness the voices of “prominent Muslim academics, community leaders and religious scholars who oppose the Islamic State … and who may have more credibility with ISIS’ target audience of young men and women than the American government.”

LIMITS OF VIRTUAL BATTLE But amplifying Muslim voices has inherent limits — the most obvious of which is that hard-line jihadists don’t exactly listen to those voices.Prominent Muslim clerics around the world have already condemned the group’s brutality.A tweet — whether by an American diplomat or a Muslim preacher — denouncing a beheading is hardly likely to sway Islamic State fighters who believe their bloody crusade is religiously and historically justified.

Against this backdrop, Stengel, a former managing editor of Time magazine, has attracted attention for his efforts to target the Islamic State online. Stengel says the U.S. had no choice but to venture into the digital arena that the group had comman-

deered. “We have to be tougher, we have to be harder, particularly in the information space, and we have to hit back,” he told The New York Times last September.

Stengel said through a spokesperson that he was unavailable over the course of two weeks to be interviewed for this article. The spokesperson also declined to answer basic questions about CSCC’s budget and functions.

The Obama administration is trying to boost the CSCC’s modest resources.

The State Department’s fiscal 2016 budget request calls for $1.3 million for the center’s Communications Integrated Analysis section while noting the section is only “minimally staffed” with two intelligence officers and two State Department civil servants.

CSCC’s goal is ambitious: to coordinate counterterrorism messaging across the federal government and integrate the many individual accounts held by various departments, embassies and officials. But doubts persist as to whether the center can streamline the government’s counterterrorism outreach on a shoestring budget, and its lofty, ill-defined mandate is likely to provoke turf wars with the Pentagon, Homeland Security Department and other agencies with overlapping missions.

The CSCC’s critics also say that yet another government entity will only add to a clunky bureaucracy that is no match for an agile terrorist group whose followers are adept at capitalizing on the fast-paced, viral nature of social media. Both public officials and private companies have a difficult May 2015

time keeping up with this virtual reality, where one crudely made video can ricochet around the web in seconds and as soon as one site is suspended, another five pop up in its place.

On that note, the Islamic State’s digital rise has sparked a larger debate over free speech and the benefits of shutting down terrorist-related sites, which could potentially yield valuable intelligence. There are also concerns that the State Department’s online offensive risks legitimizing Islamic State followers and their savvy, but at-times unsophisticated, social media campaign.

Full-Spectrum Engagement Social media is but one part of the battle to counter extremist narratives, and governmentsponsored voices are but one part of that cacophony. Though the Obama administration has highlighted the importance of the CSCC, current and former officials have not cast it as a panacea.

“Unfortunately, as we all know, the government is probably not the best platform to try to communicate with the set of actors who are potentially vulnerable to this kind of propaganda and this kind of recruitment,” Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in February. (The CSCC coordinates its analysis and policy planning directly with the National Counterterrorism Center.)

Farah Pandith, who until January 2014 served as the State Department’s first envoy to Muslim communities, echoed Rasmussen’s point in an interview.“The most credible voices in pushing back against extremists are not government voices,” she said.

“The concept of the United States government pushing back against ideology can only go so far,” Pandith said, adding that a successful counter-narrative to extremism will come from

“nongovernment actors who are quick and nimble and fast” and are able to reach the target audience of young Muslims.

That narrative needs to be driven by young Muslims, she said, noting that the U.S. government is up against a formidable online foe in the Islamic State.“While we’re taking baby steps” in directing messaging at millennials, groups such as the Islamic State are “running marathons,” she said.

The U.S. government can set up a framework for dialogue, but at some point needs to step back and let grassroots voices carry that dialogue forward, said Pandith, who is now an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She cited Sisters Against Violent Extremism, a program begun in 2008 that the State Department has funded. SAVE started with U.S. government support but is now a fullfledged NGO based in Vienna that offers a forum for female voices against extremism, Pandith said.

There is also Generation Change, a program Pandith helped establish in 2010 that highlights talented Muslim youth as role models for their generation.“Those are the kind of programs that the U.S. government should be doing far more of,” she told us, cautioning current U.S. officials against focusing too much on messaging and not enough on what she said were more meaningful cultural exchanges.

Untangling the Narratives Though social media may only get anti-extremism narratives so far, detailed analysis of these networks might offer clues to more effectively countering them. Step back from the torrent of daily tweets sent out by Islamic State supporters (133,422 per day, according to the Brookings study) and a pattern of how the group communicates with its followers emerges.

The Islamic State follower base on Twitter, for example, is “very internally focused,” write J.M.

Photo: U.S. State Department

Flanked by Attorney General Eric Holder, left, and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Secretary of State John Kerry participates in the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism at the State Department on Feb. 18.

Berger and Jonathon Morgan in the Brooking study. The authors also found that Islamic Statesupporting accounts had an average of about 1,000 followers each, considerably higher than the ordinary Twitter user. Much of the group’s social media success, in fact, can be attributed to a relatively small group of hyperactive users, numbering between 500 and 2,000 accounts that tweet in concentrated bursts of high volume, the study said.

Successfully countering the Islamic State’s online message requires first reaching its outer layers, according to Crowley, the former State Department spokesman.

“We can’t just insert ourselves into the middle of that conversation; we have to earn a way into the middle of that conversation,” he said.

“If we can influence one person, who then influences someone else, who influences someone else, you can eventually get somebody with the right idea into the middle of that conversation, but it’s not likely to be one of these official [U.S. government] accounts,” Crowley said.

For its part, the CSCC wants to burrow deeper into the Islamic State’s web of online influence. “Additional funds are needed to research operations-applicable best practices and emerging technologies in the areas of counter-radicalization and target audience messaging,” says the agency’s fiscal 2016 budget request.

Sean Lyngaas (@snlyngaas) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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May 2015

The Washington Diplomat Page 7

International Relations

Russia

Russia’s Defenders Try to Sell Their Side of Ukraine Story

by Larry Luxner

M

ost U.S. news articles about the crisis in Ukraine — and Russia’s role in fomenting it — have one or two lines that mention Moscow’s unhappiness with NATO’s expansion since the end of the Cold War. But for Russia, that one line tells the whole story.

Russians, not surprisingly, have a very different narrative of Ukraine’s civil war and the provocations that led up to it.

They think American political leaders simply don’t understand how their Russian counterparts think, nor can they see why the Kremlin harbors such a deep distrust of NATO and the European Union even though the Cold War ended 25 years ago.

Oleg Stepanov, Moscow’s No. 2 man in Washington, and Evgeny Minchenko, one of Russia’s top political analysts, drove home these points during recent lectures here that seek to clarify why they say their president,Vladimir Putin, is misunderstood and demonized in the West.

In particular, Stepanov’s March 25 speech at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies was a rare chance for the 160 people in attendance — mostly SAIS political science students — to hear current Kremlin thinking, straight from the source.

Stepanov, deputy chief of mission at the Russian Embassy, said bilateral relations are now at their worst in years — a trend that has only accelerated since the current showdown over Ukraine began in early 2014.

“

before fighting broke out between Moscow-backed separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine and the new pro-Europe government in Kiev last year. Things went downhill after Putin regained the presidency in 2012 — he’s now been at the helm, one way or another, for 15 years — and he opposed Washington on issues ranging from Syria to Edward Snowden.

Stepanov, though, says the two sides diverged long before that. Repeating Putin’s official party line, he blamed President Obama and his predecessors for destroying the goodwill that had been established following the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s.

“For years, our governments were engaged in talks on how to establish mutually beneficial strategic relations, how to build joint mechanisms.We said a lot of good words, and we claimed that we were building common spaces with no dividing lines,” he said, lamenting that such a goal never came to pass.

“Dividing lines still exist, and despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, what we saw in Europe during previous administrations was a constant wave of NATO enlarge-

Our impression is that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been no willingness on behalf of the U.S. political establishment to understand and see Russia as a valuable partner, with its own specific cultural and historical aspects and peculiarities.

”

— Oleg Stepanov deputy chief of mission at the Russian Embassy in the U.S. “Our impression is that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been no willingness on behalf of the U.S. political establishment to understand and see Russia as a valuable partner, with its own specific cultural and historical aspects and peculiarities,” he argued.

“This has caused a lot of misunderstandings and tensions between our countries.”

That’s putting it mildly. While hopes were high that President Obama’s socalled reset with Russia in 2009 would fundamentally alter bilateral relations, those ties began to deteriorate long

8

ment,”said Stepanov,blastingWashington’s recent strengthening of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe and around the world. “In 2002, the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was a strong blow to our relations, threatening the strategic balance of power that existed for so many years. For us, it’s a big concern because they can undermine our strategic arsenal.”

He added that “building such systems is also detrimental to U.S. security because it creates the illusion of invincibility.”

The question of invincibility is also

The Washington Diplomat

Foreign ministers gather at NATO Headquarters in Brussels for a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission in December 2014. Russia fears that under its new pro-Europe government, Ukraine will eventually seek membership in the Western security bloc.

important to Putin, a former KGB officer who for years has lamented the breakup of the Soviet Union. Harvard’s Stephen Walt and other foreign policy realists argue that, in fact, Russia’s insecurity has largely driven its response to Ukraine.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that Putin “is a relentless aggressor who is trying to recreate something akin to the old Soviet empire,” Walt describes Russia as “an aging, depopulating, and declining great power trying to cling to whatever international influence it still possesses and preserve a modest sphere of influence near its borders, so that stronger states — and especially the United States — cannot take advantage of its growing vulnerabilities,” he wrote in the Feb. 9 Foreign Policy article titled “Why Arming Kiev Is a Really, Really Bad Idea.”

Walt argues that the needless expansion of NATO along Russia’s borders, even though its raison d’être ceased to exist after the Soviet Union crumbled, only exacerbated Moscow’s paranoia.“As the critics warned it would, open-ended NATO expansion has done more to poison relations with Russia than any other single Western policy,” he declared.

Putin had been complaining for years that the U.S. was trying to pull neighboring countries such as Georgia into the West’s orbit. The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO after its pro-Russian president was ousted was a red line for Putin, who promptly annexed the strategic peninsula of Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Despite international condemnation, Putin proudly defends the land grab as necessary to protect Crimea’s large ethnic Russian population. As self-serving as

Photo: NATO

that justification may be, there is little doubt that Putin sees Ukraine — a former Soviet satellite of 45 million people located on Russia’s doorstep — as a vital strategic interest.

Ukraine’s historical and cultural ties to Russia run deep (Crimea itself was gifted to Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev). Aware of these ties, Obama has thus far refused to send weaponry to Kiev, fearful of triggering an arms race with Russia, which has far more vested in Ukraine than does Washington.

Evgeny Minchenko, director of the International Institute for Political Expertise in Moscow,says both Americans and Europeans underestimate the deeprooted bonds between Russia and Ukraine. The protests that broke out in Kiev last year calling for closer relations with the European Union only tell half the story, he said.

“For Americans, Ukraine is a separate country, very different from Russia. But actually, about 30 percent of the Russian population has family in Ukraine, and more than 60 percent of Ukrainians speak Russian,” he told us.“Most of them are bilingual.The idea for one part of the country to establish its own rule for the whole country was wrong. That’s why more than 80 percent of people living in Crimea wanted to secede.”

With pro-Russian rebels breathing down their necks at the voting booths, it’s impossible to know how many of Crimea’s residents actually wanted to secede, but Minchenko insisted the support was there, quipping: “I don’t understand why

See Russia, page 46 May 2015

International Affairs

Central America

Waterway to Nowhere? Nicaragua Banks on Chinese-Financed Canal

by Larry Luxner

C

hina plans to bankroll what could become the world’s most expensive civil engineering project in a country where it doesn’t even have an embassy.

Backers of a proposed $50 billion canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts say it’ll offer shippers a modern alternative to the century-old Panama Canal while creating tens of thousands of high-paying jobs in Nicaragua, the poorest nation in Latin America.

Opponents, meanwhile, say the 170-mile waterway will devastate Central America’s largest freshwater lake and do absolutely nothing for Nicaragua’s long-term prosperity. Others dismiss the audacious project altogether as a pipedream that will never happen.

Recently, three anti-canal activists traveled to Washington to speak at the nonprofit Inter-American Dialogue, where they outlined their skepticism to the massive project on legal, environmental, economic and moral grounds.

“This canal is illegitimate, moved forward by a dictatorship and handled with total secrecy,” complained Sofía Montenegro Alarcón, political coordinator of the Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres de Nicaragua (Autonomous Women’s Movement of Nicaragua).

“Basically, it sells Nicaragua’s territory and its people to an unknown Chinese concession with power unheard of in the history of Latin America.”

She added: “The concession says whatever land or resources are needed for this project can be expropriated.The regime is not accountable — not to Nicaraguans, not to anybody. We are trying to interest people here in Washington and the U.S. media to focus their eyes on Nicaragua and help us.”

Montenegro appeared with Luis Carlos Buob, a lawyer with the Costa Rica-based Center for Justice and International Law, and Pedro Alvarez, an engineering professor at Houston’s Rice University. The three made their case before 100 or so people at a March 17 event moderated by Nicaraguan-born economist Manuel Orozco, a senior fellow at the Dialogue.

“Two years have passed without any real debate.The Sandinistas are negotiating in secret,” Buob said, referring to the populist party that overthrew the Somoza regime in 1979 and has controlled Nicaragua for most of the time since then.

Buob said the proposed canal would displace up to 119,000 people from their homes, and that in three impoverished municipalities alone the waterway would result in the destruction of 2,800 private dwellings along with 96 schools, 19 health centers, 35 cemeteries and 90 churches.

“The Nicaraguan government began this project without any kind of prior consultation, even though 52 percent of this canal affects indigenous people,” he said, noting the “violent repression and stigmatization of citizens who disagree with the canal.”

Officials in Managua counter that the canal could potentially double the size of the country’s economy, while making Nicaragua a global shipping hub. Besides the canal itself,President Daniel Ortega’s leftist Sandinista government says the project will encompass two large ports and a railroad connecting those ports, along with

“

Source: CIA World Factbook

They are promising you a delicious cake, and you cannot bake a delicious cake if you use rotten eggs…. The cost of this canal is at least five times Nicaragua’s GDP. So if it’s really about sustainability, there are better ways to accomplish this.

— Pedro Alvarez

”

chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University

free trade zones, new roads, bridges, an airport and other infrastructure.

The obscure consortium behind the large-scale endeavor, Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Group (HKND), claims that upon completion in 2019, its waterway will be able to accommodate ships of up to 23,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs). That compares with the 13,000 TEUs the Panama Canal will be able to handle after its $5.2 billion expansion is finished in 2016.

“They hope to charge $1 million per ship, but the Panama Canal has never charged more than $300,000,” Alvarez pointed out.“Sometimes you do things not necessarily because there’s a business case. Who knows if what’s really at stake here is energy security for China, which is not yet transparent.”

In fact, it’s not at all clear what China’s role is in the lofty venture. In December 2014, Chinese businessman Wang Jing, the CEO of HKND Group, inaugurated construction of the so-called Nicaragua Grand Canal on the

May 2015

country’s Atlantic coast. Wang was given a 50-year concession to build and operate the canal, according to a recent report in Al Jazeera America, with the option to extend the contract for another 50 years.

Not much else is known about the telecommunications magnate or who his other investors are — or, for that matter, whether the canal has state backing from Beijing. Critics question whether Wang can come up with the money for the project — construction for it has scarcely begun and the exact route has yet to be determined — let alone whether he can complete it in the ambitious five-year timeline he’s laid out.

Clement Leung, Hong Kong commissioner for economic and trade affairs in the U.S., said he’s not familiar with HKND and had no information about the entity other than what he’s read in the media.

It seems somewhat paradoxical that China would pour so much money into a country that doesn’t officially recognize it. There is no Chinese Embassy in Managua, nor is there a Nicaraguan Embassy in Beijing.

The Nicaraguans instead maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan — one of only 22 countries that still do — a holdover from the pre-Sandinista days when Nicaragua was still staunchly anti-communist.

China has, however, made significant investments in Latin America, and Nicaragua could become its latest inroad. Mónica López Baltodano, a Nicaraguan attorney, warns that the canal represents a new form of colonization and says that 16 “briefcase companies” would benefit from the opaque deal.

“All of them were registered in Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas for $400 each, at most.

How did they receive such a concession?” she told attendees at the Inter-American Dialogue event. “I understand that HKND won’t pay any taxes for 160 years.They propose to create 25,000 jobs, but the direct

See nicaragua, page 45 The Washington Diplomat Page 9

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The Washington Diplomat

May 2015

COVER PROFILE

Commissioner Clement C.M. Leung

Hong Kong Anxiously Counts Down to 2017

by Larry Luxner

C

lement C.M. Leung’s job is about to get much more interesting.

As commissioner of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office here, Leung’s objective is to promote U.S. trade with, and investment in, this prosperous city-state of 7.2 million.

Leung’s mission, housed in a 19thcentury Beaux Arts townhouse just off Dupont Circle, isn’t an embassy, and that’s because Hong Kong isn’t a country. Rather, it is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China — a status the 426-square-mile territory acquired in July 1997 when Britain’s 99-year lease on Hong Kong expired and the prized colony was returned to Chinese sovereignty.

That’s why no flag flutters outside this mansion, though the flags of Hong Kong and China are displayed prominently in the lobby. There’s also a bilingual bronze plaque commemorating the D.C. office’s Sept. 9, 1997, inauguration

by Hong Kong’s then-chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa.

“We are not a diplomatic mission, but instead we’re treated like an international organization. We do have some immunities and protections, but we do not have the same diplomatic status as an embassy,” Leung explained.“It’s a kind of very unique situation.”

Yet make no mistake about it: Beijing is still clearly in charge.

Residents of Hong Kong had hoped that under the promised “one country, two systems” formula that gives them more autonomy and freedoms than mainland Chinese, they would also eventually achieve universal suffrage. But constitutional reform that would have

“

posal to overhaul the system is under consideration, but in order to change the current rules, Hong Kong’s legislature must approve the plan by a two-thirds supermajority — a very high bar, says Leung.

“This is not just the biggest step since the handover, but probably the most significant event in Hong Kong’s history,” Leung told The Washington Diplomat in a mid-March interview.“Back in 1998, we didn’t have any seats in the legislature. It was all appointed or indirect elections.

Now we have about 60 percent of our legislature elected directly, based on constituencies. So potentially, 2017 could be very big because all Hong Kong people could vote. At the moment, there are still a lot of differences and views about how it should be implemented.”

That’s putting it diplomatically. China’s decision to vet 2017 candidates sparked a fierce backlash last September, when one of the world’s safest and most orderly cities exploded into a battleground between riot police and tens of thousands of protesters armed only with yellow umbrellas, raincoats and plastic wrap to protect themselves from tear gas and pepper spray.

Hong Kong’s so-called “Umbrella Movement” — a civil-disobedience campaign loosely patterned after the Occupy Wall Street Movement — quickly grabbed the front pages of newspapers

Hong Kong has very strong traditions to protect civil liberties like freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly, and all this is underpinned by common law and our constitution, and by our fiercely independent courts….

These will stay no matter what the political system is.

”

— Clement C.M. Leung, Hong Kong commissioner to the United States allowed Hong Kong’s residents to directly elect their leaders for the first time ever by 2017 was shot down by the Chinese Communist Party, which insists on screening all candidates for chief executive.

For the past 18 years, Hong Kong’s top boss has been chosen by a 1,200member committee of pro-Beijing, probusiness delegates; before the 1997 handover, Hong Kong was led by a governor appointed by the British crown. A pro-

around the world, putting Beijing in a negative light and leading Chinese officials to accuse “foreign forces” of fomenting the unrest.

The dispute exposed cracks in China’s uneasy marriage with Hong Kong, where residents often complain that tourists from the mainland (or “locusts”) lack manners and buy up goods. More broadly, they fear that Beijing will trample on the independent, ordered way of life for which the territory has become

Photo: Lawrence Ruggeri

renowned.

The Umbrella Movement, however, did little to change China’s heavy-handed control of the glitzy financial center — or to dampen the former colony’s main activity: making money. Leung said that despite the protests, the number of visitors to Hong Kong actually increased last year, to 60 million, from 53 million the year before.

He added that Hong Kong’s business reputation was never tarnished by the upheaval, and that if anything, the Umbrella Movement showed that the city’s inhabitants have little to fear from the “one China, two systems” policy long advocated by Chinese communist leaders.

“It seemed from TV or newspaper photos that it was very chaotic, but there were only isolated incidents of confrontation with the police,” he said.

“Even at its height, it was not violent.The stock market operated smoothly and effectively, and the protests had no effect on the banking system. The Hong Kong dollar did not fluctuate.

“Even at the most difficult periods of time, we maintained full access to local and international media. Internet access remained unfettered. I don’t think you could really roll back all these things,” he continued. “I don’t know why people have the impression it will be under-

May 2015

mined afterward.”

One reason might be the way Beijing unceremoniously demolished Hong Kong’s largest protest camp of thousands of makeshift tents and barricades that had been set up in the middle of the city’s Admiralty district. Chinese authorities also arrested leaders of the uprising along with hundreds of their supporters.

While the crackdown drew international condemnation, China seems to have successfully waited out the protesters while refusing to give in to their political demands. Hong Kongers themselves also grew increasingly impatient with the months-long paralysis of an upscale commercial district, and the protests ran out of steam by late last year.

But pro-democracy activists have vowed to fight on. Sporadic protests have broken out, and six months after the beginning of the Sept. 28 uprising — remembered as “928” by activists — tents are sprouting up again along Tim Mei Avenue and Harcourt Road, in the shadow of Hong Kong’s looming Legislative Council Complex, where the government hopes to pass the controversial electoral package soon.

Leung said negotiators want to resolve

Continued on next page The Washington Diplomat Page 11

Continued from previous page the issue before the summer recess in July.

Support for the electoral reform bill has ticked up, especially if China offers concessions to win over a handful of pro-democracy legislators and pledges to review the process again at some point in the future. Another motivation: If nothing is passed, things go back to the old way of doing things.

But the current proposal doesn’t offer any concessions to the pro-democracy camp, giving the 1,200-member electoral committee — and by extension Beijing — control of the nomination process. Instead of picking the chief executive, as it does now, the committee would select three candidates and then people could vote on that slate. One protester told the New York Times it amounted to “fake democratic reform,� a view shared by some opposition lawmakers who could block the proposal. “If the package does not get passed, then we would revert to the status quo, meaning the chief executives will be elected by an electoral college of 1,200 as it is now,� Leung said, adding that in any event, “what we’re talking about is the electoral mechanism, not the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.�

Leung, who is not related to Leung Chunying, Hong Kong’s unpopular chief executive, says he acknowledges people’s concerns that the city’s freewheeling political environment may be undermined, but dismisses them as unrealistic. “Hong Kong has very strong traditions to protect civil liberties like freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly, and all this is underpinned by common law and our constitution, and by our fiercely independent courts,� he told us. “These will stay no matter what the political system is.�

Leung, 49, was born and raised in the former British colony, where his parents emigrated in the 1940s from Guangdong province. He graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and earned an MBA from Stanford, then joined

hong Kong at a Glance national day: Oct. 1, 1949 (anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China) hong Kong Special administrative region Establishment day: July 1, 1997 location: Eastern Asia, bordering the South China Sea and China Population: 7.1 million (July 2014 estimate) life expectancy: 82.8 years Ethnic groups: Chinese 93.1 percent, Indonesian 1.9 percent, Filipino 1.9 percent, other 3 percent (2011 estimate) religions: Eclectic mixture of local religions 90 percent, Christian 10 percent gdP (purchasing power parity): $400 billion (2014 estimate) gdP per-capita: $55,200 (2014 estimate) gdP growth: 3 percent (2014 estimate) unemployment: 3.1 percent (2014 estimate) Population below poverty line: 19.6 percent (2012 estimate) Exports: Electrical machinery and appliances, textiles, apparel, footwear, watches and clocks, toys, plastics, precious stones, printed material imports: Raw materials and semi-manufactures, consumer goods, capital goods, foodstuffs, fuel (most is re-exported) Source: CIA World Factbook

the civil service in 1987.

Leung spent years guiding Hong Kong’s trade relations with the United States and mainland China. He visited Washington frequently as a negotiator with the U.S. Trade Representative Office on textiles, with previous assignments focusing on industry, higher education, telecommunications policy, internal security, revenue and taxation, food safety and municipal services. Before coming to Washington, he was director of food and environmental hygiene from 2010 to 2014, responsible for food safety and the delivery of municipal and public

hygiene services.

This current job, which he began in February 2014, is Leung’s 12th assignment — and his first outside Hong Kong. “We are not part of the Chinese Embassy, so I do not report to the ambassador, but rather Hong Kong’s secretary for commerce and economic development,� he said. “Of course, we meet our colleagues at the [Chinese] embassy from time to time for social occasions, and when senior officials come to town, we make a point to have a courtesy call. But we are quite distinct. Hong Kong has autonomy in com-

merce and trade.�

That’s why instead of the familiar State Department-issued diplomatic plates, the mission’s official sedan uses personalized Maryland plates that say “HKSAR.�

Outside of those subtle differences, Hong Kong’s trade office — housed in a 14,000square-foot building that once served as Saudi Arabia’s chancery and consular office — functions much like any embassy. The first-floor walls of this brick, stone and terra cotta townhouse are decorated with traditional Chinese paintings, including “Scenery of Chang Jiang,� a watercolor by Fang Zhao Ling, the mother of Hong Kong’s former “Iron Lady� chief secretary, Anson Chan (who, incidentally, says the recent protests were about China honoring its handover promise to give Hong Kong free and fair elections).

Hong Kong’s Washington mission employs 20 staffers, including Leung and four other diplomats. A regional office in New York covers 31 eastern states, while another regional office in San Francisco has jurisdiction over 19 states out west. Hong Kong also has overseas trade missions in Toronto, Vancouver, London, Brussels, Geneva, Berlin, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney and Taipei, plus five on the Chinese mainland. “Essentially, our task is to promote closer bilateral ties between Hong Kong and the United States,� said Leung. “A big part of this is promoting two-way investment, explaining to a U.S. audience what is happening in Hong Kong.

When we had the big protests, people on Capitol Hill were concerned.�

And with good reason.

Last year, Hong Kong imported $60 billion worth of goods from the United States, making it the 10th-largest market for U.S. products worldwide. It’s also the sixth-largest market for U.S. agriculture, though 30 to 40 percent of all agricultural products end up elsewhere, since Hong Kong is a major world transshipment center.

See hong Kong, page 45

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Diplomacy

Automotive

Freewheeling Statecraft: Diplomats and Their Cars

by Dave Seminara

V

A 1970s Volkswagen Westfalia camper with diplomatic plates sits parked along the Oregon coast.

olkswagen Westfalia camper vans are back in style on the West Coast. But I’d never seen one with diplomatic plates until I spotted a mid-1970s vintage beauty — brown, with gold-and-white trim — parked at Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park along the Oregon coast in December.

The beach was empty and the owner was nowhere in sight. Peeking into a camper van is a bit like barging into someone’s home, but the curtains weren’t drawn and I couldn’t resist.

A slip on the dashboard revealed that the driver had paid $24 to park overnight — with a view of the Pacific Ocean — and there was enough gear in the van to prove they were sleeping in it. A copy of Peter Stark’s new book, “Astoria,” which details the story of the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest, was sitting on the passenger seat. I was impressed. Here was a diplomat who wasn’t holed up in an office, firing off cables based on things he or she read about in the papers.They were out in the trenches, experiencing my country Jack Kerouac-style.

I’ve always loved vintage cars but I’ve never been one to invest much in my rides. When I was an American diplomat posted overseas, I always felt a little self-conscious about the clunkers I drove. In Macedonia, my first post, diplomats didn’t have to pay tolls and could cut to the front of the line at border crossings.

But even with diplomatic plates, my hubcap-less, 10-year-old Nissan Altima commanded little respect.

Working on the assumption that the owner of the VW camper must have been a kindred spirit, I left my business card, along with a note asking them to get in touch with me so I could include them in this story.

More than 200 years after Benjamin Franklin, America’s first diplomat, arrived in France with what one observer called a “wreck of a carriage and three decrepit horses,” diplomats still worry about their wheels and the impression they create. What do their cars say about them and the country they represent?

Lawrence Butler is a semi-retired diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Macedonia and completed tours in Iraq, Bosnia, Brazil, Ireland, Serbia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and Washington, D.C. As a senior-level diplomat, he spent much of his career being driven around in large, bulletproof vehicles, but now he has a 2008 MINI Cooper that drives like a gocart — “fast, tight and fun.” He knows as well as anyone that what you drive, both on and off the job, can make a lasting impression.

“I took a 1974 Datsun 260Z to Finland on my first tour,” he said in an e-mail.“I stopped traffic in Leningrad in October 1977. Literally, male pedestrians crossing the street crowded around the car. I had to pop the hood to display the straight-six engine. Score one for JapaneseAmerican public diplomacy.”

Americans are known for driving gas-guzzlers, but Foreign Service Officers tend to be pragmatic in their choice of vehicle.They buy cars suitable for their posts — cars that can be serviced locally and will be easy to

14

The Washington Diplomat

Photo: Dave Seminara

Americans are known for driving gas-guzzlers, but Foreign Service Officers tend to be pragmatic in their choice of vehicle. They buy cars suitable for their posts — cars that can be serviced locally and will be easy to resell. resell. Ambassador Butler said that the only big car he used as a personal vehicle abroad was a Ford Explorer that he drove in Belgrade in the mid-1990s while the war in the Balkans was still raging.

“I bought it as a life insurance policy for my family. It was bigger than the Yugos on the road,” said Butler, who also served as the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq.“Health care was nonexistent.

Plus, four-wheel drive made really good sense.”

A good car can be like a member of the family. Butler remembers them all: the locally made, three-door VW Passat in Brazil, the “horrible, underpowered” Peugeot 505 he sold in Bulgaria to a fellow diplomat for $3,000 more than he paid for it, the Volvo XC70 in Bosnia and others. And so does Dennis Jett, a retired American diplomat who served in Argentina, Israel, Malawi and Liberia and was the U.S. ambassador to Peru and Mozambique. Jett recalls being the only person in Israel with a yellow Pontiac Firebird. He also remembers the Peugeot wagon he cruised the streets of Lilongwe with in Malawi, and the stylish BMW 318 he sold to a Liberian who got it out of Monrovia on one of the last charter flights out of the country during its civil war.

The cars that American diplomats drive for their personal use are often very different from the official vehicles they are ferried around in at work. The U.S. government, along with other countries like France and Germany, purchase domestic-made vehicles that tend to be large (think Chevy Suburban), if not bulletproof.

A State Department spokesperson said that the General Services Administration (GSA) is the mandatory supply source for the vehicle purchases of all federal agencies. Model selections and manufacturers vary depending on what the GSA offers each year on contract.The State Department refused to detail any of the vehicle security features mandated at high-threat posts, but a spokesperson said, “Some vehicles are modified and armored in response to the local threat environment.”

What we drive impacts how we’re perceived and some think that when American diplomats arrive at meetings in enormous, bulletproof, gas-guzzling SUVs, it reinforces negative stereotypes about American arrogance and lack of concern for the environment.

“The first problem is [the] ‘buy American’ [policy], which means bigger cars and supply-chain problems if you have more than one or two basic models,” said an American diplomat who spoke to The Diplomat on background. “I would prefer the flexibility to purchase vehicles where we serve that are appropriate for local conditions and can be serviced. We’d blend in better and [there would be] less down time waiting for American spare parts.”

Ambassador Jett also believes that importing American cars overseas often makes no sense.

“We would take the path of greatest expense and that made the least sense just to sell another Americanmade car that was ill-suited for the local conditions,” said Jett, author of a new book,“American Ambassadors: The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Diplomats.”

Dodge had its hideous, boxy Diplomat model in the 1970s and ’80s and India’s Hindustan Motors made a beloved little jalopy called the Hindustan Ambassador from 1958 until last year, but most legit diplomats drive much swankier cars. Many luxury brands offer diplomatic discounts and accredited diplomats can often acquire and sell cars duty-free, so it’s not uncommon for them to use a car for their tour and then turn a profit when it’s time to sell.

Limos, BMWs, Lincoln Town Cars and Benzes that wouldn’t look out of a place in a hip-hop video are not May 2015

uncommon.And sweet rides aren’t just for those from wealthy nations. In fact, one diplomat who spoke to The Diplomat on background said the rule of thumb with cars is, “The poorer the country, the nicer the cars their diplomats drive.”

Oil-rich Equatorial Guinea may be one of the world’s most corrupt kleptocracies.The fleet of luxury vehicles — Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche and Maserati — owned and later seized from Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator, has been held up as a prime example of that country’s endemic corruption.

Pamela Eyring, president of the Protocol School of Washington, said that diplomats from developing countries tend to be drawn from the elite of their society.

“For them, an imported car could be seen as a reflection of their personal status, and a statement to others their country is deserving of respect,” she said. “They tend to be more status-oriented than egalitarian.”

It would be overtly colonial and downright disrespectful to suggest that developing world diplomats should putter around in beat-up cars, but it’s a reality that their choice of vehicles will be scrutinized more closely than that of colleagues from, say, Luxembourg or Qatar. In other words, turn up for a meeting in which your country is requesting debt relief in an Aston Martin worthy of James Bond and brace yourself for a few raised eyebrows.

Of course, what diplomats and world leaders drive or don’t drive can also reinforce positive impressions as well. Colum Lynch, a veteran foreign affairs and U.N. reporter for Foreign Policy, said that he’s noticed high-ranking Dutch diplomats riding their bikes around midtown Manhattan in business attire. José Mujica, Uruguay’s famously modest president, who left office after just one term, as promised, at the end of February, drives a humble 1987 VW Beetle that the Obiangs probably wouldn’t let their pool boy drive. Mujica’s $1,800 ride comprised 100 percent of his net worth, according to his 2010 personal wealth declaration, but last year an Arab sheikh offered him $1 million for the car. (He said that if he decided to accept it, he would spend the money on the poor.)

And the Finns, who have the greenest embassy in Washington, also bring an environmentally conscious approach to transporta-

Photo: totalcarmagazine.com/Zsolt Csikós

Photo: Lawrence Butler

Former U.S. Ambassador Lawrence Butler picks up his MINI Cooper in Munich, above. At right, British Ambassador Steven Fisher poses by his green East German-made Trabant for Total Car Magazine during his posting in Budapest.

tion. Their U.S. ambassador’s official vehicle is a Mercedes-Benz E-Class hybrid, while the mission in D.C. has three chopper-style bikes made by Jopo, a Finnish company, that staff use to get to and from official functions. Their press counselor, Sanna Kangasharju, has no vehicle and says she doesn’t need one.“The money we save in not owning a car — parking, gas, insurance, maintenance — we can happily use for Uber and taxis, and there’s still plenty left over,” she said.

It’s hard not to admire missions who go green but it’s also worth noting that diplomats from countries like Finland don’t have the same security issues Americans have to worry about.

Security fears aside, though, the reality is that everyone has to get around one way or another. Do diplomats feel peer pressure to arrive in style? It depends on how you define the term. Steven Fisher, now Britain’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic, found out during a recent tour in Budapest that you don’t have to spend a bundle on your car to get rock-star treatment.

According to Total Car Magazine, Fisher bought a gimpy old East German-made Trabant for $400, painted it “British racing green” and started to drive it to meetings and official functions — not to make a particular statement but purely because it was an interesting, fun car. Pretty soon, all of his colleagues wanted a ride in it.

“It might sound strange from the deputy head of Her Majesty’s mission, but I always try to steer clear of status symbols,” he told Total Car’s Zsolt Csikos. “I have never longed for a luxury car. I don’t like them because of their flashiness, but I feel unmoved by their shape also. The Trabant is simple, it brings a smile to people’s faces, everybody feels a certain sympathy towards it.”

But cars can still be a touchy subject, apparently. Several embassies and consulates approached for this story declined to participate. A Tweet sent to the U.K. Embassy in the Dominican Republic, asking what Fisher drives now that he’s an ambassador, went unreturned. And the owner of the VW Westfalia I saw in Oregon never responded to my note, and no mission on the West Coast would claim it.

The writer Jim Atkinson once said,“Cars are like rolling diaries, metal and plastic and paint tableaux of the last 10 years of their drivers’ lives … every dent, every drooping slice of chrome, has a story behind it.” Perhaps when it comes to diplomats, some of those stories are best kept secret.

Dave Seminara (@DaveSem) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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Digital Diplomacy Forum

Europe

Estonia’s E-Residency: Newest Digital Must-Have?

by Molly McCluskey EDITOR’S NOTE: Digital Diplomacy Forum is a monthly column

by Molly McCluskey that explores how technology is reshaping 21st-century statecraft.

T

ALLINN — Like many countries working with foreign investors, Estonia has long faced the challenge of making the process as seamless as possible. The small Baltic country, known as the “tech capital of Europe,” boasts a strong domestic digital architecture that was, until recently, limited to its residents.

But the government’s new “e-residency” program, the first in the world, strives to make the Estonian digital identification process, protected by some of the world’s strictest standards, available to non-Estonian residents.

The program is primarily designed to offer foreigners living abroad access to the nation’s extensive digital services, which are among the most sophisticated in the world and allow Estonian citizens to file taxes, manage bank accounts, register companies, vote and even check their medical records.

The e-residency, passed unanimously by parliament last October, is a secure, state-issued digital identity geared toward nonresidents who already hold business interests in Estonia. It allows for digital authentication, and the digital signing of documents, and helps expedite access to banking, corporate registrations, taxes and other services. It is not a path to citizenship or legal residency, and it isn’t a travel document. But e-residency does open up a whole new digital frontier to foreigners who can, for example, start an online business under an Estonian domain, maintain an Estonian bank account or even fill digital prescriptions in Estonian pharmacies.

After clearing an application and background check, as well as an in-person identify verification process that includes a 50 euro fee, e-residents will receive a digital ID card that contains their biometric information and a digital signature that’s valid throughout the European Union. According to a report in the Guardian, the government hopes to attract around 10 million “digital citizens” by 2025.

It’s only the latest innovation for a country of 1.3 million that is striving to revolutionize tech on a global scale; a country where Skype was born; where the international currency trader TransferWise is disrupting the banking industry; and where tech entrepreneurs can develop a new product or application from idea to prototype over the

16

course of a weekend boot-camp called Garage48.

“We’ve gotten to the point where there is such a strong public expectation that we are doing interesting IT things that, if anything, if there aren’t new ideas on the table, there are public complaints,” Luukas Ilves, counselor for digital affairs at Estonia’s Permanent Representative to the EU, and the son of Estonia’s president, said in an interview at the Estonian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Like any tech pipeline, Estonia’s is vast, with many projects in multiple stages at any given moment. The country’s “data embassies” cyber-security plan is being developed as a long-term initiative to protect its citizens’ information in the event of a cyber attack, namely from Russia.The idea is that data embassies, in the form of off-site remote servers and cloud technology, would be given the same protection as traditional foreign missions.

However, the e-residency plan is more benign and is all about removing barriers, rather than putting additional ones in place.

Photo: Molly McCluskey

e-residency, you’re not only offering access to Estonian services, but you’re also giving them … an authentication that can be recognized throughout the EU. So that with the Estonian e-residency, a document is not just recognized by the Estonian authorities, but by the German, Portuguese, Dutch, Austrian authorities, etc.”

“

We’ve gotten to the point where there is such a strong public expectation that we are doing interesting IT things that, if anything, if there aren’t new ideas on the table, there are public complaints.

— Luukas Ilves

”

counselor for digital affairs at the Permanent Representative of Estonia to the European Union

“The e-residency has a true sense of justification. There’s the immediate and practical need, which is people who, already now, have some kind of relationship in Estonia,” Ilves said.

The program has benefits that reach far outside Estonian borders, and across the European Union, where mutual recognition policies and enhanced integration services are becoming the norm.

“The portion of the world that owns a business in Estonia, and needs our platform for doing business, is going to be small,” Ilves said.“But there’s a lot of value to the Estonian system in regards to our standards of verification and digital security. The idea is, by offering access to

The Washington Diplomat

Also hard to overlook is the cool factor. In an interview at his office in Tallinn, Taavi Kotka, the deputy secretary-general of ICT at Estonia’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, said that he expects interest in the program not only from people who are already doing business in Estonia, but from those who simply want to be part of the latest digital trend.

“Definitely those who actually participate in Estonian economy. Most of the people from Nordic [countries], of course they are happy to register and they will start using their e-residency from day one,” Kotka said. “But most of the first wave definitely did it because it was cool.”

Estonia’s capital of Tallinn boasts historic, medieval architecture, but the innovative Baltic country is also known as the “tech capital of Europe.”

He added: “And it is cool, I have to say.”

A wait list and early registration period opened in October, and Estonia officially began accepting in-country applications Dec. 1. On April 1, people could apply at all Estonian representations that provide consular services, and an online application function is expected to be rolled out in May. In the first four months of the program, 18,000 people expressed interest by joining the mailing list, and the program received 1,325 applications, of which 1,197 were approved by April 1.

(As of press time, my application will also have been made.)

As more and more countries develop their own national solutions for digital identities according to EU standards, the scope of the Estonian e-residency program will expand dramatically. For global citizens, especially those who spend significant time in Europe, Estonia’s e-residency may become as vital as a passport, even if it doesn’t confer citizenship.

“In the very long run, we see this as a step to not needing to have an e-residency anymore, because everyone in the world will have a strong electronic identity,” Ilves said.

Molly McCluskey (@MollyEMcCluskey) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat who lives between Washington, D.C., and various cities in Europe.

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Communications

PR 101

Public Relations Experts Help Embassies Put Best Face Forward

by Stephanie Kanowitz

T

he field of public relations, which is focused on promoting positive reputations, doesn’t always garner a good one itself.

After all, when promotion and pushing a message are involved, people tend to get wary. But in this information age, a good handle on PR can make or break organizations — including embassies. And it’s not just about visibility or brand recognition, but also the bottom line.

“A country’s embassy can be its primary interface with the American public, policymakers and the business community,” said Will Bohlen, senior global communications specialist at the Podesta Group, a lobbying and communications firm that represents various embassies. “Having a strong public relations program in Washington can build relationships and a positive profile, as well as boost tourism, influence and investment, all to a country’s benefit.”

That often means using PR to foster a country’s relationship with the U.S. government, including the administration and Congress, he said.

Embassy officials are typically in regular contact with interested parties in government, media, business and the international community at large, “but without a concerted public relations effort, that community will not strengthen and grow. Expanding that community broadens the embassy’s reach and leads to new opportunities for promoting the country in Washington and throughout the U.S.,” Bohlen added.

PR Basics To understand PR, we must first define it:“Public relations specialists create and maintain a favorable public image for the organization they represent. They design media releases to shape public perception of their organization and to increase awareness of its work and goals,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In short, PR professionals spread information about groups or individuals to sway public opinion and boost their clients’ exposure among the target audience, whether it be the media, investors, policymakers or ordinary people.

Arguably, PR was born when the first person began selling goods or services. After all, that person likely wanted more business. Modern PR, however, can be traced to 18th-century London, when Georgiana Cavendish, duchess of Devonshire, campaigned for Whig candidate Charles James Fox, according to IPR.org.uk.

The real meaning of the term, however, dates to the 20th century.

Today, PR is a booming industry in the United States.

In 2011, when the economy was slugging along, PR agencies experienced 11 percent sales growth, according to data from financial information company Sageworks.And that’s likely to continue. In 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that employment in the field would grow 12 percent between 2012 and 2022.

What Good PR Looks Like Embassies make two common mistakes when it comes to PR, Bohlen said. First, they aren’t involved

18

The Washington Diplomat

Photo: Tony Powell / Podesta Group

The Podesta Group is a lobbying, public relations and communications firm that represents various embassies.

“

Having a strong public relations program in Washington can build relationships and a positive profile, as well as boost tourism, influence and investment, all to a country’s benefit.

— Will Bohlen

”

senior global communications specialist at the Podesta Group

enough in social media.

“A lot of conversation is happening on social media, especially among influential scholars, journalists and policymakers,” Bohlen said. “Social media is a great way to engage those individuals, ensure the country’s point of view is being heard and even help find new champions. Establishing social media platforms isn’t enough; you have to tend to them, feed them, grow them.”

The other mistake is focusing only on top-tier media outlets.“If you are a smaller country, the New York Times or the Washington Post may only cover your country rarely — and often for the wrong reasons,” he said. “It takes some work, but lining up the issues and regions of the U.S. that your country cares about with the media outlets that focus on those issues or regions can be much more effective.”

Some small embassies can’t afford the help of an outside PR firm, and even internal PR efforts could be hampered by not having a dedicated PR team or point person. In those cases, Bohlen said prioritization is crucial.

“They may have a good sense of their goals and their audience, and then they will want to focus their efforts on how best to achieve success,” he said. “That may

mean having someone get more involved in digital media, or making an effort to know some key journalists and think tank scholars or working on hosting cultural events. In the end, it’s about building relationships.”

For more tips on not just doing PR, but excelling at it, we consulted with some of the area’s best agents, both inside and outside embassies. Here’s what they said.

Carla Bundy

press officer at the Royal Netherlands Embassy

The Dutch Embassy’s six-person Public Diplomacy, Press and Cultural Department where Carla Bundy has worked for 11 years serves as the PR hub for the country’s North American network of embassies, working with its counterparts in Miami, San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

“We advise them on PR, media relations, on social media; we help them when they are formulating their public diplomacy projects and calendar for the year,” said Bundy, who worked in TV news before trying PR in 1989.“It’s critical for an embassy to get its message out to its targeted audience. For the embassy’s case, not only do we want to educate and inform people in Washington about the Netherlands and its relationship with the U.S., be it on trade issues or water management or cultural issues, we also want to inform the everyday public.”

Being a hub is one thing, but handling PR in D.C. carries its own set of challenges.

“When you work in Washington, D.C., and you work for an embassy, you’re very mindful of the other [European Union] member states, and we are all competing for that airtime or that space in the newspaper or on the website of the media outlets,” she said. “We are amongst over 100 embassies in Washington, D.C., and the few that make up the [EU] member states, so we

See Public Relations, page 47 May 2015

Global Vantage Point Op-Ed

Asia

Abe Comes to Town Bringing A Message: Japan Is Rising

by Joshua W. Walker

F

or a world consumed by conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, America’s rebalance to Asia may seem like a lost cause, or secondary concern.

U.S. troops continue to be stationed in Afghanistan, while years of security partnerships in Yemen are quickly unraveling.The flagship policy initiative of President Obama’s rebalance, or “pivot” — the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement — has caused a major rift within his own party. Despite the conflicts and tensions between the different regions drawing America’s focus, there remains a way to bring U.S. foreign policy in both Asia and the Middle East together.

Japan is rising and the United States can rise with it. After 20 years of economic stagnation and a decade of political malaise, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s energetic prime minister, is bringing Japan back into the role of central actor on the world stage.

Now in his second incarnation as prime minister, Abe has firmly signaled to the world that Japan is back by visiting over 50 countries in his first two years in office. As he visited Washington, D.C., in late April, and addressed a joint session of Congress, he sought to confirm Japan as a fully engaged shaper of the international order and a vital partner of the United States for years to come.

The United States remains Japan’s indispensable ally and in turnTokyo plays a key role asWashington’s most important ally in Asia. As the world’s fourthlargest economy, one of the biggest donors of international aid and home to many of the world’s most respected multinational businesses, Japan can reinforce global norms and the existing international order led by the United States.

While Abe remains a staunch, much-needed friend to Washington in a region where China is making inroads, both as a global power and a regional force, his muscular, hawkish policies have naturally rankled Japan’s neighbors, given the country’s World War II legacy.Abe has prevaricated on Japan’s wartime atrocities, and as the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, many wonder if he’ll try to whitewash Japan’s brutal past, sparking an outcry among U.S. allies such as South Korea. The prime minister’s efforts to beef up Japan’s strictly defensive military posture have also made neighbors nervous — and prompted deep self-reflection at home.

Yet, often overlooked in the contentious debate about Japan’s collective self-defense guideline revisions is the broader security policy reform currently taking place in Tokyo. The Abe administration has sought to diversify Japan’s traditional partnerships and policy instruments by pursuing a grand strategy of connectivity among democracies, while balancing its pragmatic relations with other states. This strategy begins with Japan’s newly established National Security Council and employs the use of a variety of levers, including

Credit: DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Sean Hurt

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, left, meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on April 8.

foreign aid, defense and multilateral diplomacy, in a way unique for Japanese foreign policymakers that have traditionally not leveraged these instruments.

Japan has benefited tremendously from the U.S.led rules-based order established after World War II and now seeks to stand up to the threats that are challenging this order by strengthening its ties with other countries, especially other democracies.

Enhanced cooperation with Australia, India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) more broadly reinforces the possibilities for further cooperation between D.C. and Tokyo with these trilateral engagements.

Japan’s determination to be a global actor is un­­ der­­s­cored by recent contributions to international efforts in combating the so-called Islamic State and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Japan joined the United States and Europe in implementing sanctions against Russia. This position ran contrary to the prior Japanese goal of settling its longstanding territorial dispute with Moscow and securing muchneeded energy resources from Russia.While Japan’s in­­creased global profile has not come without controversy or tragedy, witnessed most starkly by the re­­cent public killing of two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State,Tokyo continues to move forward with initiatives that put the Japanese squarely in these conflicts.

Ultimately, Abe’s successful reentry onto the world stage will hinge on his much-vaunted “Abenomics” strategy aimed at resuscitating the sluggish Japanese economy through stimulus spending, monetary policy and structural reforms.

The success of this daunting task will likely deter-

mine whether Abe will have the political capital to sustain Japanese leadership abroad. There is little public domestic appetite for Japan’s international leadership role if direct interests are not at stake.

Thus it is vital for Abe’s Washington agenda to try and conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership as soon as possible and to clarify the benefits of its various new trilateral partnerships with the United States involving Australia, India and Southeast Asia.

From India’s triumphant Narendra Modi to Israel’s divisive Benjamin Netanyahu — and a U.S. presidential administration in its twilight — Washington has seen an unprecedented flurry of highly anticipated and consequential state visits.

Prime Minister Abe’s visit this spring will be among the most important. With Japan’s growing eagerness to participate on the world stage financially, technologically and strategically, Washington has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to capitalize on a trusted partner in Tokyo with vested interests that align with, rather than diverge from, its own strategic priorities. By capitalizing on Abe’s visit, the Obama administration’s rebalance can yet be set right again and America, with Japan’s support, be a leader in the Pacific.

Dr. Joshua W. Walker is the Japan lead at the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and previously served as a senior advisor to the State Department. This piece is adapted from a longer German Marshall Fund report by Walker and Sharon Stirling-Woolsey titled “Japan’s Global Re-Emer­gence: How Japan’s Active Diplomacy Strengthens the Foundations of the U.SJapan Alliance.”

May 2015

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May 2015

EDUCATION ■ A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

■ May 2015

The George Washington University

by Karin Zeitvogel

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In February 2011, University of California-Los Angeles professor Cristina Tirado made an alarming announcement at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, D.C. “In 2020, the U.N. has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees,” she said.

“Already, Africans are going in small droves up to Spain, Germany and wherever from different countries in the Mediterranean region, but we’re going to see many, many more trying to go north when food stress comes in,” she warned.

Just before Tirado spoke at the AAAS conference, food shortages had pushed the people of Tunisia and Egypt “over the top,” sparking the Arab Spring, she said.

Who or what was the chief culprit behind the political upheaval, the mass

May 2015

outflow of migrants from Africa, the food shortages? According to Tirado and other academics on the AAAS panel, it was climate change.

Since the AAAS talk, historical temperature records keep being shattered.The year 2014, for example, was the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1880. The World Meteorological Organization also points out that 14 of the 15 warmest years on record all took place in the 21st century.

Yet there are still politicians in Washington who roll their eyes heavenward (and see no rain if they’re in California) at the scientific consensus that has emerged

Despite Deniers, Climate Change Spurs Specialized Higher Degrees

on climate change. Or they’d point to snow somewhere to refute the idea that the planet is warming (climate change, incidentally, causes changing weather patterns, not just heat waves). To some, the very notion that climate change exists is preposterous.

Others insist that it is a naturally occurring phenomenon that cannot be blamed on, or stopped by, human activity. To think that it can change the geopolitical shape of the planet is unlikely, in their minds.

Before the 2010 congressional elections that swept Republicans into the majority in the U.S. House, the Climatesight.org blog compiled a list of statements about climate change by some of the GOP candidates, several of whom have now declared their candidacy for the White House next year, or are expected to.

Here’s what these presidential prospects have said about climate change:

EDUCATION

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.):“The climate is always changing.The climate is never static.

The question is whether it’s caused by man-made activity and whether it justifies economically destructive government regulation.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.): “[Scientists] are making up their facts to fit their conclusions. They’ve already caught them doing this.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.): “I absolutely do not believe that the science of mancaused climate change is proven. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think it’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity, or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.”

Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Texas):“Today, the glob-

Continued on next page

The Washington Diplomat Page21

Continued from previous page al warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-earthers. It used to be [that] it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.”

President Obama had a few thoughts himself about climate deniers that he made at a commencement speech at the University of California-Irvine in July 2014: “It’s pretty rare that you’ll encounter somebody who says the problem you’re trying to solve simply doesn’t exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course for the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn’t be worth it; it was going to be too expensive, it was going to be too hard, it would take too long. But nobody ignored the science. I don’t remember anybody saying that the moon wasn’t there or that it was made of cheese.”

Four months later, in November, President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, announced a joint strategy to tackle climate change. The United States would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 by about a quarter below 2005 levels, Obama said. Xi’s announcement that China’s carbon emissions would peak around 2030 and that the country would double its share of zerocarbon energy marked China’s first-ever official climate commitment.

While critics of the deal point out that China’s emissions would’ve probably peaked around 2030 regardless of any formal targets, the landmark agreement nevertheless heralded a turning point in the fundamental divide that has thwarted progress on the issue: Developing countries, led by China, the largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions, say developed countries should do the heavy lifting to curb climate change because his-

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torically they created the problem.

The administration hopes last year’s breakthrough with China will persuade other developing nations to sign onto a global climate pact at a Paris summit at the end of 2015. Any treaty would still have to make it through Congress, a tall order, and would need the backing of whoever captures the White House in 2016.

Hillary Clinton, who announced in April that she’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination, has signaled she would make climate change a central pillar of her administration.

“As you know so well, power plants account for about 40 percent of the carbon pollution in the United States, and therefore must be addressed,” she said in a speech to the League of Conservation Voters.“From the administration’s announcement last month of a $3 billion commitment to the global green climate fund, to that new joint announcement with China, to new rules under consideration for ozone, we continue to push forward. But that is just the beginning of what is needed.”

Many international leaders agree that the United States, the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, has barely begun to address climate change, and they’ve been weighing in on the subject long before U.S. politicians paid lip service to it. At the United Nations summit on climate change in September last year, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina outlined the many steps that Bangladesh has taken to address climate change, but she warned that the efforts might not be enough to help poorer, low-lying nations such as hers that are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels, natural disasters and mass migration.

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May 2015

Georgetown University

Photo: Courtesy American University, by Jeff Watts

American University has a Master’s of Arts Global Environmental Policy program in which students look at “the causes of environmental degradation and the social, cultural, economic and political mechanisms that advance environmental protection.”

ant crop varieties, has a climate change strategy and action plan, and has allocated $385 million from its own resources for adaptation and mitigation efforts.

And yet, Hasina warned, “Climate change continues to affect the lives and livelihoods of millions in our unique and active delta.

Frequency and intensity of flooding, storm surge, salinity intrusion are badly affecting our coastal habitat….Two to 3 percent of our GDP may be wiped out because of climate change.”

King Felipe VI of Spain called climate change a “shared challenge” that “threatens to upset the basic balance that makes our civilization and life itself possible.This compels us to act decisively.”

And Malawian President Arthur Peter Mutharika bluntly told the U.N. summit that “it is a known fact that climate change affects people’s lives in all parts of the world” before he enumerated the adverse impacts of climate change in Malawi alone — on farming, infrastructure, energy, human health, forestry, water, wildlife and even gender issues, he said.

Despite the dire warnings, poorer countries most affected by climate change have the least say in mitigating it, and a displaced farmer in Malawi isn’t exactly a priority for the average American voter, especially if it means making the kinds of sacrifices scientists say may be necessary to stave off the worst effects of rising temperatures. Still, there are signs the issue is seeping into the American consciousness.

A recent survey conducted by Foreign Policy magazine indicates that a plurality of Americans say climate change is real and happening now. Nearly 41 percent of respondents put global climate change at the top of a list of important foreign policy issues faced by the United States. Climate change beat tough contenders like armed conflict in the Middle East into second place, by 14 percentage points, and got nearly twice as many votes as failed or failing states, which only 22 percent of respondents said was the most critical foreign policy issue for the United States.

A New York Times-Stanford University poll earlier this year found even stronger results, with two-thirds of Americans saying they were more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change, instead of denying it. That included half of the Republicans surveyed (the other half said climate change policies could damage the economy).

Perhaps most importantly, the urgency of the issue seems to be sinking in among younger generations, a phenomenon that has trickled down to college campuses around the world.

Several universities around the world have

recognized the importance of climate change and introduced programs that teach students, usually at a graduate level, about environmental issues. The following incomplete list includes some of the schools that take a global view of climate change and offer programs that combine international affairs and environmental studies: • The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs offers bachelor’s students studying international affairs an undergraduate concentration in International Environmental Studies. Students examine issues including sustainable development and how it relates to the environment, climate change, energy and natural resources, and environmental security. Those who complete the course are able to “analyze and understand international environmental challenges and their underlying causes, and the ways in which states, nonstate actors and the international community seek to address these challenges.”

• The Energy, Resources and Environment (ERE) program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) has been around, in one guise or another, for two decades. Inspired by a series of popular energy courses offered at SAIS in the 1980s, ERE focuses on “developing innovative solutions to urgent global energy and environmental challenges.” That includes “an understanding of the ‘iron triangle’ of energy, water and food security, the threats posed by global climate change and possible solutions to these daunting problems.” Currently, there are 196 students enrolled in the ERE program. Most study at the D.C. campus of SAIS but students pursuing a master’s of arts degree can elect to spend their first year at SAIS in Bologna, Italy.

• Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service offers a Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA) major.Courses are designed to give students the tools they need to understand and address “issues related to science and technology (environment, health, energy, security, and development) that are interwoven with the historical, political, economic, social and cultural concerns of international affairs.” Coursework touches on a diverse spectrum of topics, from water resources and medical bioethics to cyber warfare and sustainable energy.

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• American University has a Master’s of Arts Global Environmental Policy program in which students look at “the causes of environmental degradation and the social, cultural, economic and political mechanisms that

See Climate, page 26

EDUCATION

May 2015

The Washington Diplomat Page23

[ sports ]

Unclenched Fists Karate Program Becomes Exercise in Peace-Building and Restraint

by Karin Zeitvogel

L

“

ead with your bellybutton, not with this,” Soolmaz Abooali says, holding a clenched fist in front of her as a group of 40 teenagers at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Va., mimics her.

Abooali is teaching traditional karate to the students at this high school named after a Civil War Confederate cavalry commander. But she’s not just teaching the 40 children here how to punch and kick the air and count in Japanese; she’s handing them key tools for peace-building and diplomacy.

And Iranian-born Abooali isn’t just a nine-time U.S. national champion in traditional karate and a fourth dan black belt; she’s also a Ph.D. candidate and graduate research assistant at the George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR). She fled Iran with her parents shortly after the Islamic Revolution. Her father had been kicked out of university for his political activism and her mother, she says, is an educated and outspoken woman who was forever falling afoul of the mullahs. The family went first to Pakistan, then to Bangladesh and finally to Canada as refugees, before settling in the United States.

Abooali began doing traditional karate as a young girl in Canada and found it gave her the tools to cope with being an outsider, and to understand her unsettled past.

Years later, Abooali and her U.S. national teammate, Cassandra Haynes, came up with the idea of using the martial arts to teach youngsters the fine art of peace-building.

“Cassandra and I were talking about how traditional karate has impacted our lives and about some of the work I do with the State Department and nonprofits where I incorporate conflict-resolution skills into traditional karate training because I’ve seen parallels in them,” Abooali told The Washington Diplomat. “She was like, how about we try something at J.E.B. Stuart?” where Haynes teaches.The two women met with the school principal, who was very supportive, and in early 2014 launched a pilot program.

It was an instant success. At the start of this school year, the class was meeting twice a week at J.E.B. Stuart and was a recognized after-school club in Fairfax County. “We had 20 places and it filled up in a couple of days. We started a wait list and it kept growing. So we opened a bigger class,”Abooali said.

Part of the goal is to instill confidence and discipline in students who attend J.E.B. Stuart, which is home to one of the highest concentrations of poverty in Fairfax County and lags behind in graduation rates and SAT scores.

Half the students in the class wear the pristine white gi karate training uniform and a white belt neatly tied at the waist.The other half are dressed in their civvies.

They’re the newcomers. The students wearing gi have been doing traditional karate and are surprisingly good at it after such a short time. It’s also had a surprisingly positive impact on them.

One student in the class, Terry Tran, wears a black belt. He’s been doing traditional karate since he was a young boy.Tran got his black belt when he was 10, but had to give up the sport because it took too much time to drive to lessons. Now, he can take it after school, two days a week.Tran says it has helped him.

“Sometimes I get really frustrated and it’s really hard to control myself, and I come to class and I feel much better afterward,” he said.

High school senior and karate class veteran Kevin Palomino introduces a new student to Haynes. The new boy doesn’t have any parents, Palomino explains. He lives with an aunt and needs a note from Haynes to say he is going to karate class.

It’s to reassure his aunt that he isn’t running with a bad crowd, Palomino said.

“I think this class will help him,” Palomino told us. “I mean, he has no parents and only one guardian. He’ll learn English and become more disciplined and will be a leader in his class, like I am.”

Palomino said he has been doing traditional karate for a year, and he’s noticed a positive change in himself.

“I was just a kid who respected teachers and liked to talk to them but I’m more the leader in my classroom now, and more well behaved,” he said.

Salma Moutei’s family is originally from Morocco. (J.E.B. Stuart is said to be one

Pa24

Elizabeth Do, center front, completes an exercise with a heartfelt “osu” — a contraction of two Japanese words that roughly means to endure under pressure — during a peace-building karate class at Virginia’s J.E.B. Stuart High School. At right, black belt Terry Tran clenches his fist while his instructor, Soolmaz Abooali, kicks in the background.

Photos: Karin Zeitvogel

of the most diverse high schools in the United States.)

For her, “Karate is not about being aggressive. It’s more about peace, about being peaceful. Peace means no stress, having an empty mind. Or if someone pushes you to fight them, you don’t react,” she said.

Words like that are music to Abooali’s ears.The topic of her doctoral dissertation is sports as a peace-building tool, and to her, traditional karate is the ideal peacemaking sport.

First of all, she said, traditional karate is an individual activity.

“With team sports, you’re involved with other team members, there’s a lot of interaction.An individual sport requires a lot of self-reflection…. It really homes in on the whole self-reflection part. It homes in on the individual themselves, on them pushing through what they need to, to achieve their goals,” she explained.

Another thing about traditional karate that lends it so well to conflict resolution, according to Abooali, is the fact that, contrary to popular belief — at least among the uninitiated — it is a non-contact sport.

“We generate a full, powerful technique but we stop about an inch away from the other person’s skin and transfer the energy without really hitting. It takes a lot of control and a lot of awareness and emotional stability to be able to physically stop,” she said.

By exercising the self-control required in karate, a person becomes introspective, Abooali said.“It allows you to figure out, OK, what do I need to do? How am I feeling in this fast, explosive interaction with another person? How am I aware of my distance? How am I aware of the energy the other person is transmitting to me?”

Those are all thoughts that could be lifesaving and are certainly relevant to conflict resolution.“You’re in Afghanistan or Iraq and you’re feeling fear or uncer-

EDUCATION

The Washington Diplomat

May 2015

tainty of the unknown.You have to be aware of distance, of how you’re feeling, of how your emotions are taking control of the situation or not.There are a lot of parallels with traditional karate,�Abooali said.

In the karate class, Abooali teaches the 40 teens techniques and draws parallels with conflict resolution.“The whole non-contact part of it — it’s not about aggression, not about how hard you can hit the other person. It’s really about how you exercise self-control and are aware of yourself when you’re standing so close to another person.That’s a whole other idea than how hard and fast you hit someone,�Abooali told the class.

Could a karate class help world leaders to think beyond themselves? Should John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, do some traditional karate training before they head back into the Iran nuclear negotiations? Or what about South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and rebel chief Riek Machar?

Abooali answers a question with a question.“To create world peace, what’s needed? The world is composed of individuals. If those individuals found a way to be at peace with themselves and had the skills to create that peace within themselves and apply those skills to their environment, then we have individuals who are trained in peace and they can incorporate it in their own world. “Leaders, because of the platform they have and influence they command, they are the ones who need the most to learn how to self— Soolmaz Abooali reflect, to acknowledge their own nine-time U.S. national karate champion weaknesses through this physical form of training,� she said. “I would love for leaders to train in karate. It’s beyond the whole ‘let’s sit in the classroom and learn this knowledge and internalize it at the intellectual level and then go out and do great work.’The person hasn’t internalized it.�

The class executes another movement that makes one of the newcomer boys giggle.

Abooali warns him: any more giggling, and the entire class will have to do 50 push-ups. For the rest of the class, no one loses focus.

Abooali’s karate class is only offered at J.E.B. Stuart, but another traditional karate class could do the trick, she said, as long as you keep the focus on what the sport is all about: leading with your head, not with clenched fists.

“The whole non-contact part of it — it’s not about aggression, not about how hard you can hit the other person. It’s really about how you exercise self-control and are aware of yourself when you’re standing so close to another person.�

Are your language skills getting in the way of what you want to say?

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Karin Zeitvogel (@Zeitvogel) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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EDUCATION

May 2015

The Washington Diplomat Page25

from page 23

Climate advance environmental protection.” Students take courses in global policy studies, environmental science, economics, international environmental politics and environmental law in the two-year program.

• Students who enroll in Boston University’s Master of Arts in International Relations and Environmental Policy program divide their time between the school’s Department of International Relations and the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies.The architects of the three- to four-semester-long program say it is a recognition that the management of natural resources and resolving environmental conflicts have become important areas of international relations.

• Yale University offers a three-year graduate program that allows students to earn a master’s degree in global affairs in conjunction with one of four of Yale’s professional schools, including the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Students gain “a cross-disciplinary understanding of the scientific, political and economic aspects of international resource management and environmental issues.” Prospective students have to apply to both schools at the Connecticut-based Ivy League university.

• Further afield, the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna — the one in Austria, not Virginia — has had a combined, two-year Environmental Technology and International Affairs (ETIA) master’s program since 2007. That year, there were five students enrolled in the program. This year, the maximum number of students, 25, will be admitted out of more than 100 from around the world

Photo: The George Washington University

The George Washington University offers bachelor’s students studying international affairs an undergraduate concentration in International Environmental Studies.

who applied. Students spend their first year studying international relations at the Diplomatic Academy, and their second and final year studying environmental technology at Vienna’s University of Technology.

• The Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam offers a one-year master’s degree in Global Environmental Governance. The course description on VU’s website says, “Protecting the environment might be the largest challenge of our time. Politicians and policymakers have to cooperate with multinationals, organizations and scientists to confront international environmental problems such as the increase in CO2 emissions and climate change. This creates a growing demand for researchers who are knowledgeable about international environmental politics.” And that is just what VU and the other degree programs hope to fill.

“It’s pretty rare that you’ll encounter somebody who says the problem you’re trying to solve simply doesn’t exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course for the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn’t be worth it; it was going to be too expensive, it was going to be too hard, it would take too long. But nobody ignored the science. I don’t remember anybody saying that the moon wasn’t there or that it was made of cheese.”

— U.S. President Barack Obama

Karin Zeitvogel (@Zeitvogel) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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EDUCATION

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May 2015

MEDICAL ■ A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

Ebola’s

■ May 2015

Partitioned rooms of an Ebola treatment unit were created to fight the viral hemorrhagic fever during Guinea’s 2014 Ebola outbreak.

Mixed Bag The Evolution of an Epidemic Generates Good News, Bad News

by Gina Shaw phoTo: CDC / Dr. heiDi SoeTerS

i

t’s a classic good news-bad news story. The good news? The Ebola epidemic is waningg rapidly. During the first full week in April, just 30 cases of the disdis ease were reportedd in all of West Africa. Numbers ticked up slightly the fol following week, to 37, but these figures are still by far the lowest weekly num numbers of new cases since early in the epidemic, which began last spring. Even a few weeks ago, weekly new case reports ranged from the 120s to the 150s.

In Liberia, there have been no new cases of Ebola diagnosed since March, and the last person confirmed to have Ebola in that country died on March 27. In Sierra Leone, schools reopened on April 14 for the first time since classes were suspended at the height of the outbreak eight months previously (in Liberia they had opened in February).

Treatment capacity now exceeds demand in both Liberia and Sierra Leone, so the World Health Organization has begun guiding these countries’ governments in slowly and safely shutting down surplus facilities, while keeping a few strategically located treatment centers operating. In addition, only about 100 American troops, out of an initial force of 3,000, remain in the region as part of the U.S. government’s $5.4 billion response to the crisis.The focus now shifts to

helping survivors and rebuilding ravaged health care systems.

So where’s the bad news? This means that the researchers testing potential vaccines for the deadly disease, which has infected nearly 26,000 people and killed more than 10,000 — the vast majority in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — may not have enough patients to study. That in turn might hinder the response to a future epidemic, which is a constant fear in a region with porous borders and poor health services.

Two Ebola vaccines are currently in trials in West Africa: one developed at the National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline, and another developed by Canada’s public health agency and licensed to Merck and NewLink Genetics.

The Merck vaccine, which had already undergone testing in Guinea, began trials in Sierra Leone in mid-April.The goal is to vaccinate 6,000 people in close contact with Ebola patients, especially front-line workers such as doctors, nurses, burial workers and others who are at greatest risk of developing and spreading the disease.

MEDICAL May 2015

Continued on next page

The Washington Diplomat Page 27

If vaccinated study participants remain Ebola-free, is that because the vaccine worked, or because cases of Ebola were on the wane anyway?

A World Health Organization staff member conducts a class on how to properly don personal protective equipment to a Guinean health-care worker during the Ebola crisis last year.

Continued from previous page

PHOTO: CDC / DR. HEIDI SOETERS

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But only nine new cases of Ebola were reported in Sierra Leone during the two weeks ending on April 12, so that makes teasing out the effectiveness of the vaccine difficult. If vaccinated study participants remain Ebola-free, is that because the vaccine worked, or because cases of Ebola were on the wane anyway?

Participants will still be tested to see if they develop an immune response to the disease, but with so few new cases, it may be difficult to ascertain just how effective the vaccines are in real life.

Finding a successful vaccine strategy against Ebola remains an important priority — even though the current outbreak looks like it has, at last, been effectively contained and is finally burning itself out — because there will almost certainly be another outbreak, experts say.

This last outbreak was uniquely vicious.

Previous Ebola outbreaks, all taken together (there have been 10, all in Africa), killed just under 1,600 people in total, according to the World Health Organization. That’s less than one-sixth of the 10,000-plus toll exacted by the latest epidemic. This naturally prompted the question of whether the virus had mutated in some new and deadly way.

But in a study published in the April issue of the journal Virology, British scientists who conducted a sophisticated computer analysis of all Ebola outbreaks since 1976 reported that the virus has undergone many genetic changes over time, but those changes haven’t made it any more or less deadly.

“Unfortunately this does mean the Ebola virus that has now emerged on several occasions since the 1970s will very probably [mutate] again,” said professor Simon Lovell of the University of Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences.

On the positive side, these findings probably mean that — unlike the ever-mutating flu virus — vaccines developed to fight today’s Ebola, if they’re effective, will likely still work against an Ebola outbreak that crops up five years from now.

Study co-author David Robertson offered another optimistic conclusion.“It also means that methods to successfully tackle the virus should work again, so hopefully in the future an outbreak can be stopped from spreading at a much earlier stage.”

So hopefully the worst Ebola outbreak in human history will never lose that distinction.

Gina Shaw is the medical writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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MEDICAL The Washington Diplomat

May 2015

culture & ■ WWW.WASHDIPLOMAT.COM

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES

Nonstop Filipino From disaster relief and young leaders to gold treasures and fashion, Maria Victoria “Vicky” Jose Cuisia has worked with an array of nonprofits — and works nonstop for her fellow Filipinos. PAGE 31

ART

OAS Cold Warriors

arts

entertainment

‘DIVINE’

■ MAY 2015 Aida Muluneh’s “The 99 Series”

DEATH If you’ve visited the National Museum of African Art and been impressed, it’s time to go again and be transported by “The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists,” a sprawling but compelling collection of mixed media that transforms the dramatic, subterranean space into reflections on the afterlife. PAGE 30

“Libertad de Expresión: The Art Museum of the Americas and Cold War Politics” is a timely reminder of how politics and art are inextricably linked. PAGE 32

ARCHITECTURE

HOT Designs “Hedonistic sustainability” — that’s how Danish-born architect Bjarke Ingels describes his innovative designs, which span the spectrum of climate and community, as seen in “HOT TO COLD: an odyssey of architectural adaptation.” PAGE 33 PHOTOS: AIDA MULUNEH / NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN ART

DINING

FILM REVIEWS

Restaurateur Nora Pouillon was showing Washingtonians how to be organic before anyone had any clue what that was. PAGE 34

A fake Tinder profile of a female bot generated viral buzz for the striking British thriller “Ex Machina.” PAGE 36

[ art ]

‘Divine’ Reflections African Artists Embark on Afterlife in ‘Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell’ Michael Coleman

I

f you’ve visited the National Museum of African Art and been impressed, it’s time to go again and be transported.

The museum’s new exhibition “The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists” is a sprawling but compelling collection of mixed media that transforms the dramatic, subterranean space into reflections on heaven, purgatory and hell.

Featuring works from over 40 African artists representing 18 countries as well as the African diaspora, the exhibition is inspired by Dante’s 1320 poem, a masterpiece of Italian literature. The art includes paintings, videos, sculptures, textiles, photography, prints and collages, some pieces specially commissioned for the exhibition.

“The Divine Comedy” is the first African art showcase to encompass all four floors of the striking museum, which descends from its first floor off the National Mall to several subfloors below centered by a PHOTO: PÉLAGIE GBAGUIDI / NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN ART spiral staircase.

Above, Pélagie Gbaguidi’s “Dansleventreduserpentdanhomê” and At a press preview, exhibition co-curaWangechi Mutu’s “The Storm Has Finally Made It Out of Me tor Simon Njami offered some rambling and opaque Alhamdulillah” are among the works inspired by Dante’s epic 14thobservations about his first exhibition for the century poem in “The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell museum before conceding he was not as much a Revisited by Contemporary African Artists.” “curator”as a“bandleader.”Regardless,the renowned art critic and his co-curator Karen Milbourne, a permanent curator at the museum, who led a concise The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and informative tour, have assembled a stellar and and Hell Revisited by Contemporary varied collection of artwork.

The exhibition also includes an interactive learning African Artists space that helps visitors better understand the works through Aug. 2 in the context of the museum itself. One of the most National Museum of African Art intriguing aspects of the display is its multidimenPHOTO: ROBERT WEDEMEYER; WANGECHI MUTU / SUSANNE VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES PROJECTS 50 Independence Ave., SW sional theme. On the first level, viewers encounter the materials — is dazzling.

In one of the phoartists’ version of heaven.

For more information, please call (202) 633-4600 tos of an African American woman covered A 42-foot canvas by Pélagie Gbaguidi is swirling and or visit http://africa.si.edu. in white paint and black dots, a collection complex, while Egyptian photographer Youssef Nabil’s of red hands interrupts the photo and gorgeous, otherworldly, hand-colored silver gelatin prints of an empty, neon blue-hued beach earn their ambitious title:“I Will Go to appears to be pushing and pulling her visage in different directions. Muluneh’s Paradise.” Zoulikha Bouabdellah’s “Silence” adopts a more religious notion of work, commissioned for the exhibition, wasn’t a stretch for her philosophically.

“I do believe we’re living in the inferno,” the Ethiopian artist declared at the heaven.The installation, consisting of a series of colorful prayer mats, each topped with a series of snazzy women’s high-heeled shoes pointing toward Mecca, is an press preview.

South Africa’s Wim Botha exhibits a large-scale bronze inspired by Greek intriguing commentary on the role of the fairer sex in contemporary Islam.

As we descend to purgatory, or the space one crosses on the way to some- sculpture. The inky black work is all gorgeous, angular lines and kinetic energy, where else, for better or for worse, we encounter Benin-born artist Dimitri while its faceless subjects suggest frantic flight. The piece is haunting and mesFagbohoun’s “Refrigerium.”The complex mixed-media installation is a meditation merizing.

As we come to the end of hell — or the beginning, depending on which way on religion, the afterlife and the great unknowns. The piece is built around a wooden confessional box and incorporates a broom, book, screws, ceramic the viewer enters the gallery — we encounter Jems Robert Koko Bi’s utterly objects, electroluminescent paper, frame, inverter and audio/video. Fagbohoun fascinating but morbid sculpture installation “Royal Convoy” consisting of a rudiexplained during a press preview that the installation is the second part of an mentary boat filled with wooden skulls. The disjointed heads lie eerily lifeless in earlier project he called “Papa was a Rolling Stone?” about his missing father and the boat, ready to be transported to another dimension.

Much of the fun and inspiration in “The Divine Comedy” is seeing heaven, things he would have liked to discuss — or “confess” — to him.The confessional box in “Refrigerium” features a cutout of a traditional-looking Jesus face, but his purgatory and hell through the very different interpretations of these talented artists. The thought-provoking, well-conceived and visually arresting exhibition eyes are glowing, making for the most sinister-looking Messiah in recent art.

“I just felt 12 years of Catholic school coming back to me,” one viewer said compels us to consider our own understanding of these concepts either in the present or the afterlife, depending on your point of view.That’s the point of great with a chuckle as she walked away from the work.

As we descend toward a darkened “hell” on the museum’s bottom level, Aida art, right?

Muluneh’s “The 99 Series” serves as another showstopper. Her series of seven photographs — chosen to represent the exhibition in the museum’s promotional Michael Coleman (@michaelcoleman) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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[ diplomatic spouses ]

Tireless Filipino From Disaster Relief to Fashion, Philippine Wife Helps Homeland

by Gail Scott

F

rom disaster relief and young leaders to gold treasures and fashion, Maria Victoria “Vicky” Jose Cuisia, wife of Philippine Ambassador Jose L. Cuisia Jr., works nonstop for her fellow Filipinos.

“I prefer to be active and use time management. I don’t have any children here so I have the time,” said this affable mother of five and grandmother of three.

Here in Washington, Vicky Cuisia is working primarily with three groups at the moment. The Filipino Youth Leadership Program (FYLPro), which she spearheaded, is designed “to reignite an interest in developments in the Philippines” by allowing young FilipinoAmericans to apply for trips to meet key government and business leaders in the Philippines. She hopes the FYLPro alumni return to the United States ready to develop projects of joint interest to Filipinos and Americans. Cuisia also devotes her time to the ASEAN Women’s Circle, through which she showcases Filipino culture, art and values among the diplomatic corps and influential women in Washington.

Finally, the Bohol Restoration Group, which she established after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the Philippines in 2013, is a mammoth project to restore the country’s ruined heritage sites.

Three weeks after that earthquake, the Southeast Asian island nation was struck by Typhoon Haiyan (called “Yolanda” in the Philippines), one of the strongest storms in recorded history. In the aftermath of that disaster, which killed over 6,300 people, Cuisia led the Philippine Humanitarian Coalition. Under its umbrella, the coalition brought together over 3,000 Filipino-American groups in the United States to organize a collective response to the rehabilitation efforts in the Philippines.

A year and a half later, Haiyan recovery efforts are still underway.

To that end, Cuisia noted that the PHOTO: JOY ASICO / SISTER CITIES INTERNATIONAL U.S.-Philippines Society is hosting a fashion show on June 11 at the Maria Victoria Jose Cuisia and her husband, Philippine Ronald Reagan Building and Ambassador Jose L. Cuisia, are pictured above at the 2015 Sisters International Trade Center to aid in Cities International Gala and at left in a family Christmas photo. the recovery of fashion microenterprises. All of the clothes featured at the Laura Vicuna Foundation Inc., a nonprofit that helps the fashion show, which is being street children, and the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, a held the day before the country’s Roman Catholic women’s religious group, where she proIndependence Day, will be handvided running water to poor parish churches. made with sustainable fabrics like Before her nonprofit projects, Cuisia, who holds a bachpineapple and banana fiber. More elor’s degree in business, worked for two different firms. than 600 people are expected for For more than 30 years, she was president of Domel Realty the fundraiser.

I prefer to be active and use Development Corp., where she focused on affordable highMeanwhile, back in Manila, rise living for middle-class Philippine families. She rehabiliCuisia works with Philippine time management. I don’t have any tated the company from bankruptcy through restructuring Business for Education (PBed), a and repayment of all foreclosed mortgages.

USAID partnership that provides children here so I have the time.

For five years during that time, she also worked with the scholarship funding for 1,000 Insular Bank of Asia and America, where she developed teachers around the country and — MARIA VICTORIA “VICKY” JOSE CUISIA corporate social responsibility projects that included housserves as the voice of the business wife of Philippine Ambassador Jose L. Cuisia Jr. ing initiatives for resettled slum dwellers and micro-financcommunity on education reform. ing loans for low-income families that boasted a 98 percent She also chairs a program that offers public high school teachers and students a variety of projects in art, culture, repayment ratio.

Like other diplomatic spouses, Cuisia is proud of the strides her emergingeducation, judiciary training and religious initiatives. While in Washington, she created similar joint initiatives with groups based here and low-income communi- market nation of nearly 100 million people has made.The Philippine archipelago, which consists of over 7,000 islands, is successfully transitioning into a servicesties back home to promote Filipino art and education.

At home, Cuisia showcased Filipino art by convincing the country’s Central and manufacturing-based economy that is one of the fastest-growing in Asia. It’s Bank, known as Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas, to release its pre-Hispanic gold collec- also home to a large multiethnic population and one of the largest diasporas in tion, which she discovered in the bank’s vaults.This collection, which highlights the world.

“The Spanish, Chinese, Dutch and Americans have all integrated into us,” Cuisia a flourishing pre-colonial Filipino society, is now open to the public as part of a permanent exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. Under the auspices of explained,“and 80 percent of us are Catholic, thanks to the Spanish settlement.”

“People are so friendly; smiling is their second nature,” she added. “We are the Asia Society, the gold collection will be coming to Washington this September.

Cuisia’s nonprofit work spans the social spectrum. She’s been involved with See DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES, page 35

“

May 2015

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The Washington Diplomat Page 31

[ art ]

Timely ‘Expresión’ OAS Looks Back on Its Cold Warrior Artistic Past

by Sarah Alaoui and Anna Gawel

I

n this town, few things can escape the tinge of politics, and art is no exception. International institutions throughout Washington, including embassies and organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the Organization of American States (OAS), have arts and culture sections to further their work.

The Art Museum of the Americas, housed at the OAS,launched“Libertad de Expresión: The Art Museum of the Americas and Cold War Politics” as a reminder of which side of history the OAS was on during that conflict — a particularly timely reminder considering that the United States finally seems to be turning a page on its troubled past with a former Cold War adversary.

A few weeks after the exhibit debuted, the OAS hosted the seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama City, where President PHOTOS: COLLECTION OAS ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS Obama met with Cuba’s Raúl Castro in the first face-to-face meeting between a U.S. and Cuban head of state in nearly 60 years, signaling a historic thaw in the frosty relation- Alejandro Obregon’s 1956 “Estudiante Muerto (El Velorio)/The Dead Student (The Vigil),” ship. above, and Carlos Merida’s 1961 “Mural” are among the works featured in “Libertad de Despite a Republican backlash, Obama is pressing ahead with his diplomatic rap- Expresión: The Art Museum of the Americas and Cold War Politics.” prochement, lifting the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move that could precede the reopening of a U.S. embassy in Havana. But old habits die hard, officials accuse Venezuela and other member states of thwarting attempts to monitor and Obama’s outreach is sure to run into stiff resistance from America’s Cuban exile elections or investigate human rights abuses, diluting the bloc’s democracy-promotion mandate. The result: an unwieldy, toothless bureaucracy that operates on consensus — community, a vocal and powerful voting bloc.

“Libertad de Expresión” espouses the Cold War-era tug of war whose ideological and rarely achieves it.

The OAS’s unanimous decision-making structure has allowed members to block varibattles still resonate to this day.The exhibit draws on the work of the museum’s founding director, José Gómez Sicre, a Cuban-born lawyer, art critic and author whose OAS career ous democracy initiatives, but at the same time, the distrust that many Latin nations feel began as a visual arts specialist with the group’s precursor, the Pan-American Union, in toward Washington is hardly surprising.The U.S. has a long tradition of plotting to over1946.According to the OAS, Gómez Sicre’s approach to cultural diplomacy “championed throw unfriendly regimes throughout the hemisphere, and using art as part of that artists sympathetic to international trends in contemporary art, with the intention of strategic arsenal is nothing new.The CIA has admitted to engaging in covert operations demonstrating the cosmopolitanism in the Caribbean, Central and South America and to spread American abstract expressionist art around the world in its cultural struggle with the Soviets. the United States, while also emphasizing freedom of expression.”

“We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who That included influential styles and movements such as surrealism, concretism, art informel and abstract expressionism, along with experimental forms and themes were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom inspired by pre-Columbian civilizations. The exhibition features more than 60 artists, of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do including Joaquín Torres-García, Roberto Matta and and what you must paint, which was what was going on Jesús Rafael Soto.

Libertad de Expresión: The Art Museum in the Soviet Union,” said Tom Braden, the first chief of the Gómez Sicre spent several decades working to CIA’s International Organizations Division, in an interview introduce U.S. audiences to Latin American art, which of the Americas and Cold War Politics with The Independent. he said was largely defined by “diverse and at times through June 7 Much more recently, culture and politics collided when even antagonistic physical and spiritual geographies.”

OAS Art Museum of the Americas USAID reportedly tried to infiltrate Cuba’s underground He also lauded the “diversity of expressions” that conhip-hop movement in an almost-comical attempt to stir temporary artists used to explore notions of identity 201 18th St., NW unrest among the population. and the modern experience.

For more information, please call (202) 370-0147 The hip-hop fiasco shows there’s still plenty of profit But this diversity of expression rarely included comor visit www.museum.oas.org. to be made off a dying Cold War-era propaganda war.The munist or socialist voices, whose artwork Gómez Sicre Art Museum of the Americas likes to think it holds a more refused to display in the OAS museum. For the Cubanborn writer, who studied at New York University and Columbia, celebrating the com- subtle — and legitimate — place in the annals of that war, serving as a venue to showcase an eclectic array of Latin American artists. munist revolution that took over Cuba would’ve betrayed the OAS’s democratic ideals.

And while its founder, Gómez Sicre, allied himself with the U.S. cold warriors of the The OAS was founded in 1948 to push democracy throughout the Americas, a mission that in recent years has been eroded by political squabbling — perhaps an inevitable day, the museum he helped build is busy looking to the future. Its current director, Andrés Navia, said he is focused on bringing more international attention to the museconsequence of trying to represent 35 member states with vastly different agendas.

“The OAS has undertaken multiple initiatives to monitor human rights, provide elec- um’s permanent collection and highlighting its role and relevance in supporting the toral oversight, promote development and enhance security in the region,” writes the mission of the OAS (previously, he worked on cultural tourism projects in the Maya Council on Foreign Relations in a recent backgrounder.“[I]t has also come under fire as region at the Inter-American Development Bank).

“Libertad de Expresión” looks back on a key part of the museum’s past in an effort to ineffectual and inconsistent in applying its democratic principles. Ideological polarization and mistrust of the OAS have prompted doubts over its relevance in the region and keep that mission relevant for a post-Cold War world. spurred the creation of competing regional groups.”

Leftist states such as Venezuela have long complained that the OAS serves as the Sarah Alaoui (@musingsdiffused) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat. mouthpiece of the United States, the group’s biggest financial backer. Conversely, U.S. Anna Gawel is managing editor of The Washington Diplomat.

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[ architecture ]

BIG Footprint ‘HOT TO COLD’ Spans Spectrum of Innovative Design Solutions

by Elena Goukassian

I

f you’ve been to Manhattan recently, you may have noticed a particularly unusual construction project on the corner of West 57th Street and 12th Avenue. Dubbed W57, it’s a combination of a skyscraper and a classic Copenhagen courtyard building. Its designer, Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), calls it a “courtscraper” with a “miniature Central Park” in the center.

But its strangeness doesn’t even come close to some of BIG’s other projects, which include a residential complex where every unit has its own private swimming pool on the balcony and a flotilla of university dormitories that can be unlinked and hitched to a boat to float back home for the summer.

Architectural models of these and more than 60 other BIG projects are currently on display at the National Building Museum.

“HOT TO COLD: an odyssey of architectural adaptation” organizes the models by the average temperature of their sites, from the deserts of the Middle East to the fjords of Greenland, to explore how the firm’s designs are shaped by the surrounding culture and climate.

Organized with the support of the Embassy of Denmark and co-curated by BIG and the National Building Museum’s Susan PiedmontPalladino, the exhibition has an unusual setup that suits both its subject matter and the museum’s striking architecture — models are suspended from the second-floor balconies of the Great Hall.

Upon entering the vast space, visitors are greeted by a whimsical model made entirely of LEGOs. The homage to the iconic Danish toy company comes complete with a wide diversity of LEGO people sitting on terraces — wizards, pirates and zombies among them. Upstairs, visitors make a complete tour around the balcony (“around the world in 800 feet”) to see the rest of the in-progress models — from the hottest climate to the coldest — before entering an exhibition space with more models, videos and interactive displays.

Learning about the designs with the sound of the courtyard fountain in the background and the sun streaming in through the upper windows, it’s hard not to become engrossed in the projects.“When I lead tours of the exhibition, we start on the south side of the building,” said Piedmont-Palladino. “By the time we get to the far corner, late in the afternoon, that part of the building [displaying projects from the Earth’s coldest regions] is in shadow and even feels chilly. It’s like a journey.”

Although the designs of the buildings themselves often look futuristic, certain practical trends emerge. “There’s a lot of exposed skin on the hot side,” observed Piedmont-Palladino.

The buildings also get more huddled and closer to the ground the colder it gets.

This isn’t just an aesthetic choice. BIG takes pride in using the local climate — and community — to shape its creations. For example, in a design for the headquarters of a Middle Eastern media company, BIG created a large courtyard shaded by a giant architectural canopy. BIG’s other “hot side” projects also focus on providing shade, taking into consideration the direction the building faces and tweaking the design to make it as energy efficient as possible.

Danish architect Bjarke Ingels founded the firm, which now has a major branch in New York, in 2005. According to the museum, he “coined the phrase ‘hedonistic sustainability’ to reflect his philosophy that environmentally responsible buildings and neighborhoods need not be defined by pain and sacrifice.”

Along with environmental considerations, BIG’s other major design influence is

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PHOTO: KEVIN ALLEN

HOT TO COLD: an odyssey of architectural adaptation runs through Aug. 30 National Building Museum 401 F St., NW For more information, please call (202) 272-2448 or visit www.nbm.org.

local culture.The canopy on the media company building was inspired by traditional shading techniques that the architects came across in local outdoor marketplaces, and the whole building is covered in abstract geometric shapes reminiscent of those used in Arab decorative arts. By letting local cultures and climates define its designs, BIG works for a more humanistic architecture, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all modernism. In the exhibition’s introduction, BIG writes that the role of architecture is to “choreograph the complex relationship among the natural and human-made, civic and private, individual and society…. Architecture is storytelling.”

One of Piedmont-Palladino’s favorite BIG projects, Copenhagen’s 8 House, is a prime example of architecture as storytelling.

Completed in 2010, 8 House is a residential building that seeks to organically combine numerous aspects of an entire neighborhood into a single structure. It’s shaped like a giant figure eight and residential units of all PHOTO: JAKOB BOSERUP / MAKWERK kinds coexist with a café and sloping rooftop green spaces, all connected by a continuous walkway.

“I got a chance to visit and it was a fantastic experience,” recalled Piedmont-Palladino. “It’s s full of life. People were riding their bikes, gardening, walking around PHOTO: IWAN BAAN PHOTO: BIG with strollers.There was a sense of joyfulness all Among the striking designs conceived by Danish around. It speaks to the architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) are the Danish culture of comMountain Dwellings apartment building, center photo, munal living and urbanand 8 House, above left, both located in Copenhagen. ity. I’d love to see someBIG has also been tapped to revitalize the south end of thing like that in D.C.” the National Mall in D.C., above right, and create a big A seemingly utopian maze at the National Building Museum, top right, where residential building may 60 of the firm’s projects are now on display. not be coming here any time soon, but a BIG design was chosen last fall to revitalize the south end of the National Mall. The goal of the $2 billion refurbishment, which encompasses the Smithsonian Castle, Hirshhorn Museum, National Museum of African Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, is to create a more open and friendlier public space. (Last summer, BIG was also tapped to create a giant maze at the Building Museum.)

Even BIG’s traditionally industrial projects have a human element. One of BIG’s most bizarre and innovative works (and Piedmont-Palladino’s other favorite) is a design for a waste-to-energy plant plant that doubles as a ski slope and climbing wall.

And the LEGO building at the entrance of the exhibition? It’s real (or it will be soon).

The goal was to design a new building for LEGO that could be theoretically constructed using only giant versions of its iconic bricks.

Elena Goukassian is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.

The Washington Diplomat Page 33

[ dining ]

Natural Pioneer Pouillon Recalls Going Organic, Before Everyone Else Did

by Michael Coleman

W

hen chef Nora Pouillon opened the now-iconic Restaurant Nora near Embassy Row in 1979, she received some friendly advice from Sally Quinn, the consummate D.C. socialite and wife of former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.

“She told me don’t say the word ‘organic’ — it sounds like a biology class,” Pouillon recalled with a smile during an April 8 press luncheon for her lively new memoir “My Organic Life: How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today.”

Of course, today “organic” is widely considered the gold standard in dining and nutrition — so much so that the term has almost become passé.The food trend has become a multibilliondollar international business and something of an obsession among particularly health-conscious, educated consumers.

Pouillon, who grew up in the Austrian Alps and later moved to Vienna before landing in Washington as a young chef, is now among the nation’s most celebrated and respected purveyors of organic food. In addition to being a local dining destination, Pouillon’s restaurant was the nation’s first certified organic restaurant, meaning that at least 95 percent of all ingredients used are produced by certified organic farmers, growers and suppliers.

Over a delicious and — naturally — organic lunch of fresh Hawaiian greens with hearts of palm, sake-glazed black cod and Austrian chocolate almond cake, Pouillon explained her restaurant’s mission and the intent of her book.

“The idea of the book is to inspire people to live in a more healthy and sustainable way,” she said.

The mother of three grown children has devoted her life to spreading the gospel of healthy, nutritious food that is free of the pesticides and chemicals that plague so much of what we find in American grocery stores and restaurants.

“Eating in a healthy way means you can eat whatever you want,” she said.

“You just have to use wholesome, nutritious ingredients — and that usually means organic.”

If Pouillon weren’t so warm and approachable, her warnings about hormone-infused meats and pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables could come across as scolding.When a reporter asks Pouillon what she tells people who insist that eating healthy, and especially organic, is too expensive or even “elitist,” she becomes animated.This is clearly a subject she has considered at Restaurant Nora length.

2132 Florida Ave., NW “Do you want to spend your money (202) 462-5143 on healthy food or doctor’s visits?” she responded with a wry arch of her www.noras.com eyebrows.“You have to take responsiHours: Mon.-Thu., 5:30-10 p.m.; bility for your health.”

But Pouillon also concedes that Fri.-Sat., 5-10 p.m. organic foods can be hard to find in the United States, where so much is grown and processed by sprawling food conglomerates.

“There is not enough available — too few do it,” she said of the move toward organic farming.

Pouillon also encourages us to push our grocers for better-quality options. “As a consumer you have enormous power.You just have to ask for it,” she said.

If organic foods are tough to find today, they were virtually nonexistent when Pouillon came to town in the late 1960s. Long before farmers markets came into vogue and the words “sustainable” and “locally sourced” became de rigueur menu descriptions, Pouillon was shocked to discover the Wonder Bread-quality lineup of processed foods that filled America’s grocery stores.

She began to teach cooking classes and eventually became a chef at the Tabard Inn. After she and her husband split up, Pouillon opened Restaurant Nora, tapping the extensive network of organic farming contacts she had made in Virginia, West Virginia

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The Washington Diplomat

CREDITS: ABOVE, MATTHEW RAKOLA; BOOK, MARGARET THOMAS

Nora Pouillon, the brainchild behind Restaurant Nora, talks about her quest to offer Washingtonians healthier eating choices in her new memoir, “My Organic Life: How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today.”

and Pennsylvania.

Pouillon’s book is a frank and entertaining look at the celebrity chef’s personal life, from her picturesque upbringing in the Austrian Alps and PHOTO: SCOTT SUCHMAN then Vienna to her three-year dependence on amphetamines as a teenager to her relationships, including his-and-hers extramarital affairs during her first marriage. It’s also an interesting snapshot of D.C. and its accomplished and intelligent personalities, many of whom Pouillon calls friends.

You can sense her immense pride in a retelling of the night President Obama and the first lady dined at her restaurant.

“I’ve spent most of my life in Washington, and I could never have dreamed that we’d have a president and, especially, a first lady who are so committed to promoting healthy foods,” she writes.“It made me realize how far we have come since the days when I felt as if buying organic meat were some kind of crime.”

And the book, of course, is an ode to her love affair with good food.As noted on the cover jacket,“My Organic Life” is as much the story of America’s postwar culinary history as it is memoir. Pouillon engagingly traces the birth of the farm-to-table movement, the proliferation of farmers markets across the country and the evolution of the chef into social advocate.

She says she hopes to prod those of us who read the book to be more conscious of the culinary and dietary decisions we make. She said her restaurant aims to provide patrons with a satisfying meal, but not an overly indulgent one.

“When people come here and they leave they feel good; they don’t feel too heavy,” she said.“They know the food is pure and without additives.”

But she conceded they could suffer a headache the next morning.

“They might drink too much wine because I do have good wine,” Pouillon said with a wry smile.

In conjunction with the release of Pouillon’s book, Environmental Working Group Executive Director Heather White announced her organization’s new “Food Scores: Rate Your Plate,” an online database and mobile app that helps shoppers find healthier, cleaner and greener food. You can find more information about the program at www. ewg.org/foodscores.

Michael Coleman is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

May 2015

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from page 31

Diplomatic Spouses giving and caring. Filipinos have a family orientation. We take things lightly and are very patient.”

When I asked her if her husband is patient, she gave me a wry smile.“No, he’s not; he’s of German descent,” she said, noting that many Filipinos, whose relatives came over during World War II, are of German descent.

“His grandfather was pure German and he married a Filipino woman,” Cuisia said of her husband’s family. “They had eight children: four were blond and light-skinned like my husband and four were not. More important than my husband’s skin color is his character.

That’s what matters when you marry. When I embraced him, that was it.”

The couple met in Manhattan when he was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “I lived in a small building with other Filipinos, a lot of whom were going to school. I was working at an accounting firm. We married two years later,” she recalled.

Two of their daughters now live in New York City. Jaymi is single and Anna is married and the mother of their youngest grandchild, Dylan, who is 18 months. Their other grandchildren are 4 and 7.

Cuisia and her husband are known around Washington for wearing traditional native dress. The ambassador often dons embroidered formal shirts known as “barong-tagalog,” while her “terno” dresses are renowned for their characteristic puffy sleeves and beautiful material.The one she was wearing during our interview was made out of pineapples; bananas are also used in the weaving.

The subject of Philippine fashion intrinsically brings to mind Imelda Marcos, widow of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the country from 1965 to 1986.

May 2015

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Nicknamed the “Steel Butterfly,” she was infamous for her vast collection of 3,000 pairs of shoes and lavish spending.

“I have no politics in my blood,” Vicky Cuisia said, noting that Imelda Marcos, 84, is currently a congresswoman and that two of her children also hold political offices. “They want power; there is always the dynasty issue.”

Coups and corruption have marked Philippine politics since the country’s independence in 1946. More recently, the government has had to confront territorial disputes with China and a domestic Muslim insurgency in the south.

The current president, Benigno Simeon Aquino III, comes from a long line of politicians (his mother was famed “People Power” President Corazon Aquino), although unlike the Marcos dictatorship, Cuisia says Aquino has run a much more “transparent” government. “Our president serves for six years, so around Christmas this year he will leave.”

The ambassador — who previously served as governor of the Central Bank of the Philippines and chairman of its Monetary Board — was appointed to his post in Washington by Aquino four years ago. When not promoting the Philippines in the U.S., the couple visits home via their usual 22-hour route through Detroit and Tokyo.

When I asked Cuisia if she had any hobbies, she looked at me blankly. With all the nonprofit work that she does both here and in the Philippines, free time is not on the schedule.

“As far as doing something for pleasure, I like to help someone or something especially if it helps with the promotion of the Philippines. We are building a house outside [Manila] at home.We want to avoid the pollution and everything that gives us allergies.You should see how happy I am when I am there.”

Gail Scott is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

The Washington Diplomat Page 35

[ film reviews ]

Not-So Artificial AI Female Bot Demonstrates Trickiness of Playing God in ‘Ex Machina’

by Ky N. Nguyen

A

[

ccompanied by Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson and esteemed Guatemalan­ American star Oscar Isaac, British writer­di­ rector Alex Garland showed off his suc­ cessful directorial debut, “Ex Machina,” at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival.

The striking British thriller made a celebrated North American premiere in Austin.

During the tech­friendly fes­ tival, the film’s promotional team lifted stills of its robotic main character Ava, played by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, to create a fake profile on the dating app Tinder. Reflecting the film’s storyline, Ava on Tinder is purportedly a 25­year­ old female but actually is a bot, which may have fooled some real­life Tinder users seeking a love connection.The buzz over the viral promo­ tional stunt probably upstaged SXSW coverage of the film itself.

Garland’s previous film credits include writer of British director Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine.” Like those movies,“Ex Machina” is simi­ larly built on an intelligent script. The screenplay takes a deep plunge into tackling tricky philosophical questions including the boundaries of man play­ ing God, what makes one human, etc. Garland’s stylish direction, mostly within the cramped confines of one house, deftly navigates the viewer through the thriller’s complicated plot twists. And the heady story of “Ex Machina” is brought to life by stunning performances from the principal cast members.

Irish actor Gleeson turns in a solid performance as Caleb, a young program­ mer working for a mammoth technology corporation best known for its web search tool that has tentacles reaching into many indus­ tries — a thinly veiled nod to real­life search giant Google’s vast dominance Ex Machina and wildly ambitious goals. Isaac (English; 108 min.; scope) (“Inside Llewyn Davis,”“A Most Violent Year”) fully inhabits the role of mythi­ Angelika Mosaic cal billionaire Nathan, the chief execu­ ★★★★✩ tive of the company. (Both Isaac and Gleeson will soon become much more famous after playing in the next “Star Wars” franchise.) Vikander’s breathtaking portrayal of the humanoid Ava conveys how the robot uneasily treads the gulf between being a machine and desir­ ing to be human.

For winning a company lottery, Caleb’s coveted prize is a week at the elusive CEO’s remote, secluded compound in the mountains.

After Caleb arrives by helicopter, he is assigned to work on his genius boss’s latest project,Ava, a robot displaying stunningly advanced artificial intelligence, including AI’s holy grail of emotions. Caleb takes part in a Turing test to assess if Ava’s thoughts and words are human­like enough to fool another person into thinking she is human. In an homage to “Frankenstein,” Nathan’s creation Ava becomes smarter than both he and Caleb might imagine, leading to unantici­ pated consequences.

Swedish actress Alicia Vikander portrays a robot that displays stunningly advanced artificial intelligence in “Ex Machina.”

“Planetary” acts as a stirring visual poem driven by awe­inspiring widescreen photography shot on location in multiple continents and many countries from around the Earth — plus footage from outer space, reaching far into the Milky Way. A variety of interviews of notable figures complement Ferstad’s stunning imagery to tell Kennedy’s story. NASA astronauts Garan and Mae Jemison — the latter known for being the first female African American astronaut — recall that from outer space, they felt an overwhelming sense of how the Earth is truly one unified entity. Their understanding of the world’s interconnectedness far sur­ passed their previous, more abstract notion of the concept.

]

‘Planetary’ Perspectives A receptive audience at South by Southwest (SXSW) welcomed the world­ premiere screening of the epic documentary “Planetary,” accompanied by lively discussions with British director­producer Guy Reid, screenwriter Steve Kennedy, cinematographer Christopher Ferstad and subject Ronald Garan, a former U.S. astronaut. “Planetary” subsequently made its D.C. premiere at the National Geographic Society in late March, followed by a theatrical release at the AFI Silver Theatre and Vimeo On Demand on Earth Day, April 22.

In the vein of Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” and Ron Fricke’s “Baraka,”

36

PHOTO: UNIVERSAL PICTURES

The Washington Diplomat

PHOTO: PLANETARY COLLECTIVE

The San Francisco Bay Bridge is among the arresting images shot on location in multiple continents and many countries from around the world for the documentary “Planetary.”

[

Planetary Other distinguished interview subjects include anthropologist Wade Davis; the head of (English, Tibetan and Spanish with the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu school; National subtitles; 85 min.; scope) Geographic explorer Elizabeth Lindsey; and AFI Silver Theatre environmentalist Bill McKibben. The film may Vimeo On Demand have benefited from fewer talking heads, giving www.vimeo.com/ondemand/planetary the amazing imagery more of a chance to speak for itself. Nonetheless, the interview subjects ★★★★✩ do deliver meaningful remarks, including repeated assertions that humankind cannot indefinitely continue down the path we have taken of rapid modernization.

Their messages share a common thread:The world, its people and nature are all connected. A noteworthy observation is that the strong sense of individual self is a relatively recent notion in human history, taking hold in (mostly

]

May 2015

Western) society over the last few hundred years. As a result, in modern times, an indi­ vidual person or group’s decisions are too often made without regard for the needs of others, including future stakeholders.

Individual actions can create wide­ranging, often unintended impacts across the world.

A very important example is how the major actors and (frequently multinational) corporations driving human growth may not give proper consideration to the delete­ rious effects of unsustainable development on the environment. Such shortsightedness will damage the health of our fellow citi­ zens and deprive our descendants of criti­ cal natural resources in the future. The film posits that only by working together and considering all perspectives can humans come to a resolution and make progress in solving the world’s major, seemingly insur­ mountable problems, such as saving the Earth’s environment.

The Who’s Odd Couple First­time documentarian James D. Cooper’s insightful film “Lambert and Stamp” made quite a splash at its world pre­ miere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014.

Cooper’s debut documentary turns out to be an outstanding music doc boasting top­ notch sight and sound. It also benefits from an abundance of historical footage and revealing interviews with key players. The true tale — stranger than fiction — explores the unlikely origins of the legendary British rock band,The Who. The fascinating, tragic story focuses on

May 2015

[ PHOTO: COLIN JONES / TOPFOTO / THE IMAGE WORKS

Chris Stamp, left, and Kit Lambert became accidental managers of one of the world’s greatest rock bands, as documented in “Lambert and Stamp.”

their accidental managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, a funny odd couple with a complicated relationship who brought the band to fame.The roster of historical figures interviewed in “Lambert and Stamp” include Stamp (before he died in 1992) and famous members of The Who, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. Lambert died in 1981, so he only appears on screen in archival foot­ age.

In the 1960s, Lambert and Stamp found each other at Shepperton Studios, where they toiled on film crews.They bonded over their shared love of film, including Jean­Luc Godard and the French New Wave that was revolutionizing cinema at the time, over­

coming their divergent backgrounds in class­conscious England. Openly gay Lambert led a posh life, including an Oxford education and a famous classical composer­ conductor father, Constant Lambert.

Roughneck Stamp grew up in the working­ class East End of London, the son of a tug­ boat captain and brother of now celebrated actor Terence Stamp, who speaks about his brother in the movie.

As wannabe filmmakers inspired by their beloved family members, Lambert and Stamp sought an appropriate subject for their prospective cinéma vérité documen­ tary. After deciding to look for a rock band in the swinging London scene of 1964, they

Lambert and Stamp (English; 117 min.)

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

★★★★✩

]

found the High Numbers, a fledging four­ some requiring significant development before they would become worthy of a film made about them. So Lambert and Stamp became band managers, a profession in which they were novices, but they turned out to be naturals with solid instincts.

They reapplied their cinematic inclina­ tions to help create audience­pleasing rock stars, adorned in fashionable costumes, who gave shockingly entertaining perfor­ mances. The managers rechristened the band The Who, which eventually became a smashing success and legendary super group. Lambert and Stamp’s surprising suc­ cess as music entrepreneurs locked them into the business.They never got around to making their film as originally intended, but a good amount of the footage they shot illuminates the screen in “Lambert and Stamp.”

Ky N. Nguyen is the film reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.

Plan Your Entire Weekend.

www.washdiplomat.com

The Washington Diplomat Page 37

[ film ]

CINEMA LISTING *Unless specific times are listed, please check the theater for times. Theater locations are subject to change.

Czech Fair Play Directed by Andrea Sedláčková (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Germany, 2014, 100 min.)

Set in 1983 Czechoslovakia, 18-year-old sprinter Anna dreams of making the Olympics in Los Angeles. In preparation, her coach gives her injections of stromba, which she learns from her boyfriend’s family is a dangerous drug that could lead to infertility. Anna rejects taking the injections, but her performance levels begin to decline (director in person).

César Chávez’s efforts to organize 50,000 farm workers in California, some of whom were braceros — temporary workers from Mexico permitted to live and work in the United States in agriculture, and required to return to Mexico if they stop working.

AFI Silver Theatre Mon., May 4, 7 p.m.

Clouds of Sils Maria

A veteran actress comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable reflection of herself when she agrees to take part in a revival of the play that launched her career 20 years earlier (English, French, German and Swiss-German).

This is the incredible true story of Christina Noble, an Irish children’s rights campaigner, charity worker and writer who, after experiencing a recurring dream, escaped the slums of Ireland and risked everything on the streets of Vietnam, eventually founding the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation in 1989.

English

Directed by Henry Hughes (U.S., 2015, 25 min.)

5 to 7

Divorce is a life sentence for Feda, a thirty-year-old Afghan American woman pushed aside by her conservative community for being divorced with no kids.

Taking control of her life, she uses her one marketable skill as a bilingual immigrant, returning to her birthplace as an interpreter for U.S. forces in Afghanistan (English and Dari; part of the GI Festival).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

An Apartment in Berlin (Ein Apartment in Berlin) Directed by Alice Agneskirchner (Germany, 2013, 84 min.)

More and more young Israelis are going to Berlin — an estimated 20,000 have moved to Germany’s capital. But Berlin was also the place from which the Nazis planned the systematic extermination of the Jews. Three generations after the Holocaust, does this fact matter to young Israelis?

Goethe-Institut Tue., May 12, 6:30 p.m.

Berga: Soldiers of Another War Directed by Charles Guggenheim (U.S./Germany, 2003, 96 min.)

“Berga: Soldiers of Another War” reveals the untold story of 350 American prisoners of war caught in the tragedy of the Holocaust — the final work in the distinguished 50-year career of late documentary filmmaker Charles Guggenheim (part of the GI Film Festival).

Angelika Mosaic Sun., May 24, 10:30 a.m.

Blood Fruit Directed by Sinead O’Brien (Ireland, 2014, 80 min.)

This documentary explains how a strike over the sale of South African fruit in Ireland became the focus of world attention as a key battleground in the fight against apartheid.

AFI Silver Theatre Wed., May 27, 7 p.m.

Cesar Chavez Directed by Diego Luna (Mexico/U.S., 2014, 102 min.)

This film follows legendary organizer

38

Angelika Mosaic Fri., May 22, 7 p.m.

Noble

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

In this sweet and romantic love story, an aspiring novelist falls in love with Arielle, a beautiful older Frenchwoman he meets on a Manhattan street, not knowing that she is married. Their acquaintance blossoms into friendship and attraction, and free-spirited Arielle invites him to have an affair—at the traditional French hours of 5 to 7 (English and French).

engage the Taliban. After one of them steps on a mine left from the Russian occupation some 25 years before, his colleagues rush to his aid only to find they are surrounded by mines and every move threatens serious injury or death (director in person; part of the GI Film Festival).

Directed by Olivier Assayas (France/Switzerland/Germany/U.S./ Belgium, 2014, 124 min.)

The Avalon Theatre Wed., May 13, 8 p.m.

Directed by Victor Levin (U.S., 2015, 95 min.)

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

Day One

Directed by Stephen Bradley (U.K./Vietnam, 2015, 101 min.)

Angelika Pop-Up Opens Fri., May 8

Pride Directed by Matthew Warchus (U.K./France, 2014, 119 min.)

Angelika Mosaic Sun., May 24, 12:50 p.m.

Inspired by an extraordinary true story: It’s the summer of 1984, Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers is on strike, prompting a London-based group of gay and lesbian activists to raise money to support the strikers’ families.

Dior and I

AFI Silver Theatre Fri., May 1, 7 p.m.

Directed by Frédéric Tcheng (France, 2015, 90 min.)

Sunshine Superman

In 2012, legendary French fashion house Christian Dior Couture announced the appointment of designer Raf Simons as its head dreative director. “Dior and I” takes a privileged, behind-the-scenes look at the high-stakes makings of Simons’s debut haute couture collection and how it returned to the origins of the house of Dior (English, French, Italian and Flemish).

Directed by Marah Strauch (Norway/U.S., 2015)

This heart-racing documentary examines the life of Carl Boenish, the father of the BASE jumping movement, whose early passion for skydiving led him to ever more spectacular, and dangerous, feats of foot-launched human flight.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., May 29

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., May 1

The Water Diviner

Far from the Madding Crowd

Directed by Russell Crowe (Australia/Turkey/U.S., 2014, 111 min.)

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg (U.K./U.S., 2015, 119 min.)

In Victorian England, the independent and headstrong Bathsheba Everdene attracts three very different suitors: a sheep farmer, a reckless Sergeant and a prosperous and mature bachelor.

Angelika Mosaic Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., May 1

Good Kill Directed by Andrew Niccol (U.S., 2015, 102 min.)

A Las Vegas-based fighter pilot turned drone pilot fights the Taliban by remote control for 12 hours a day, then goes home to the suburbs and feuds with his wife and kids for the other 12. But the pilot is starting to question the mission.

Theater TBA Opens Fri., May 22

Kajaki. The True Story Directed by Paul Katis (U.K./Jordan, 2014, 108 min.)

In September 2006, a three-man British patrol sets off from their outpost overlooking Kajaki Dam in Afghanistan to

An Australian man travels to Turkey after the Battle of Gallipoli to try and locate his three missing sons. (English, Turkish, Greek and Russian).

Angelika Mosaic Landmark’s E Street Cinema

Estonian Tangerines Directed by Zaza Urushadze (Estonia/Georgia, 2015, 87 min.)

Set in 1992, during the growing conflict between Georgia and Abkhazian separatists in the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, this compassionate tale focuses on two Estonian immigrant farmers who decide to remain in Georgia long enough to harvest their tangerine crop (Estonian, Russian and Georgian).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., May 1

Farsi About Elly (Darbareye Elly) Directed by Asghar Farhadi (Iran/France, 2015, 119 min.)

May 2015

Beautiful Sepideh is a friendly young wife and mother with a tendency to stretch the truth to try to make things better. She arranges a weekend getaway with three couples to the seashore, where tragedy suddenly strikes with a mysterious disappearance.

Recriminations ensue and relationships are strained (Farsi and German).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., May 8

French After Winter, Spring Directed by Judith Lit (U.S./France, 2013, 75 min.)

Seen through the eyes of family farmers in southwest France, this internationally award-winning film is an intimate portrait of an ancestral way of life under threat in a world increasingly dominated by large-scale industrial agriculture (French and English).

Goethe-Institut Mon., May 4, 8 p.m.

Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution (Nos enfants nous accuseront) Directed by Jean-Paul Jaud (France, 2009, 112 min.)

“Food Beware” follows an experiment in a small village in the mountains of France, where — in opposition to powerful economic interests — the town’s mayor has decided to make the school lunch menu organic, with much of it grown locally.

Alliance Française Fri., May 29, 7 p.m.

In the Name of My Daughter (L’homme qu’on aimait trop) Directed by André Téchiné (France, 2015, 116 min.)

In 1976 Nice, Agnès Le Roux, daughter of the owner of the Palais de la Méditerranée, falls in love with Maurice, a beautiful lawyer 10 years her senior.

After Maurice loses the casino, Agnès disappears and 30 years later, her mother is determined to see him put behind bars.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., May 22

Saint Laurent Directed by Bertrand Bonello (France/Belgium, 2014, 150 min.)

Yves Saint Laurent’s life from 1967 to 1976 is depicted, during which time the famed fashion designer was at the peak of his career (French and English).

(Italy/France, 2014, 103 min.)

This darkly elegant gangster drama centers on a former narcotics trafficker, now living peacefully as a shepherd, who is drawn back into his family’s drug-trade dynasty by his impetuous son.

Angelika Pop-Up

Korean 301, 302 Directed by Park Chul-soo (South Korea, 1995, 100 min.)

The title refers to the apartment numbers of its two heroines. In 301 lives Song, an amateur chef fond of cooking elaborate meals for herself. Across the hall lives Yun, an anorexic writer. When Yun mysteriously disappears, a detective investigates, and a strange relationship between the two women comes to light.

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., May 17, 2 p.m.

Cart (Ka-teu) Directed by Boo Ji-young (South Korea, 2014, 104 min.)

When several women are unfairly laid off from a big box supermarket, they unionize and fight to get their jobs back — only to be met with everything from legal threats to armed thugs from their corporate opponents.

Freer Gallery of Art Fri., May 8, 7 p.m.

Confession Directed by Lee Do-yun (South Korea, 2014, 114 min.)

Lee Do-yun’s impressive, noir-inflected directorial debut is an action thriller about three childhood friends whose bonds are tested when they are asked to stage a robbery so one of their mothers can collect on an insurance policy.

AFI Silver Theatre Tue., May 26, 9:15 p.m., Thu., May 28, 9:30 p.m.

Man on High Heels (Hai-hii) Directed by Jang Jin (South Korea, 2014, 125 min.)

Cha Seung-won plays a macho homicide detective so tough he can defeat a roomful of gangsters with his bare hands and emerge without a scratch. But he has one secret: He’s a woman trapped in a man’s body and is preparing to get a longed-for sex-change operation when a ruthless gang comes seeking revenge.

Freer Gallery of Art Fri., May 29, 7 p.m.

Area theaters Opens Fri., May 15

Miracle in Cell No. 7

Two Days, One Night

Directed by Lee Hwan-kyung (South Korea, 2013, 127 min.)

Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne (Belgium/France/Italy, 2014, 95 min.)

In order to keep her job, a laid-off solar panel factory worker will need to plead her case and convince seven workers to forgo their annual bonuses by Monday.

AFI Silver Theatre Fri., May 15, 7:30 p.m.

Italian Black Souls (Anime nere) Directed by Francesco Munzi

Mixing comedy, tragedy, family drama and hilarious physical gags, and starring several of Korea’s most talented character actors, this is the story of a mentally handicapped single father who is wrongly convicted of murder and sent to death row.

AFI Silver Theatre Mon., May 18, 9:15 p.m., Wed., May 20, 9:15 p.m.

The Pirates Directed by Lee Seok-hoon (South Korea, 2014, 130 min.)

One of the biggest Korean box office hits

The Washington Diplomat

May 2015

of 2014, this swashbuckling tale is set in 1388, at the dawn of the Joseon Dynasty.

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., May 3, 2 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Wed., May 13, 9:30 p.m.

We Are Brothers

The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow (Oo-lee-byeol il-ho-wa eol-lug-so

Two brothers, separated as children when one of them was adopted by an American family, are reunited on a tearjerking talk show. When their dementiasuffering mother wanders off during filming, the brothers go on a wild goose chase across Korea.

Directed by Chang Hyung-yun (South Korea, 2014, 81 min.)

In this whimsical animated film, a satellite comes to earth in the shape of a girl who falls in love with a singer-songwriter boy, who in turn has been turned into a cow after his heart is broken.

Directed by Jang Jin (South Korea, 2014, 101 min.)

Freer Gallery of Art Sat., May 30, 2 p.m.

from page 41

Events Sat., May 16

The Kreeger Museum 2015 Gala

The Kreeger Museum Gala, held under the patronage of Belgian Ambassador Johan Verbeke, raises needed funds to support its educational initiatives and public programs. This year, half of the participating schools in our programs were from underserved communities of Washington, D.C., and 70 percent of all participating schools were Title I recipients. Join us as we strive to provide art education for all. Tickets are $300.

Kreeger Museum

MUSIC Sun., May 3, 4 p.m.

The Cambini-Paris Quartet

A period instrument quartet known for their exploration of rare and forgotten scores, the Cambini-Paris Quartet presents the music of Hyacinthe Jadin and Félicien David, two 19th-century French composers who remain virtually unknown outside of France.

Tickets are $30.

The Phillips Collection Mon., May 4, 6:45 p.m.

Concert: Julia Vari

Julia Vari is a jazz singer, pianist and arranger whose thoughtful and unique musical interpretations have her garnered high praise and afforded her the opportunity to perform at festivals and venues throughout North America, Latin America and Europe. She’s joined by pianist Fred Hughes and bassist Amy Shook. To attend, email rsvp@instituteofmexicodc.org.

Mexican Cultural Institute Mon., May 11, 7:30 p.m.

Redbrick Duo

Formed in New York City by Irish guitarist Damien Kelly and American flutist Jessica Lipstone, Redbrick Duo brings a fresh approach to the guitar-flute combo, enticing audiences of all musical tastes with their sheer virtuosity and musical sensitivity. Tickets are $150, including buffet dinner and wine; for information, visit www.embassyseries.org.

European Union Residence Fri., May 15, 7:30 p.m.

Rock Concert – Suspicious Package: Austria Rocks!

Long-rumored in existence but kept tightly shrouded in the secrecy of political cartoonist Tom Toles’s basement, Suspicious Package finally exploded onto the D.C. music scene in 2008 with its mix of rock, blues, punk, funk, pop, alternative and originals.

Admission is free but registration is required and can be made at http://acfdc.org.

Embassy of Austria Sat., May 16, 4 p.m.

Children’s Chorus of Washington: Vive la France!

With “Vive la France!” the Children’s Chorus

Swedish The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann) Directed by Felix Herngren (Sweden, 2013, 114 min.)

Based on the internationally bestselling novel by Jonas Jonasson, a 100-year-old dynamite expert decides it’s not too late to start over and escapes the old folks’ home to embark on an unexpected

of Washington (CCW) continues its French-themed season in anticipation of its tour to France this summer. CCW’s performing ensembles, comprised of 160 choristers ages 9 to 18, will present a celebration of French music, language and culture.

Audience members will be treated to a wide range of choral styles from Edith Piaf’s beloved “La Vie en Rose” to Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris.” Tickets are $30 (at the door) to $50; for information, visit childrenschorus.come.

National City Christian Church Sat., May 16, 8 p.m.

Kayhan Kalhor

The U.S. does not boast many kamancheh (Persian spike fiddle) performers, let alone any in the same league as Kayhan Kalhor, who uses the instrument to produce a broad range of sounds, from an almost percussive bark to a sweet, throaty tone. The Tehran-born Kalhor closes out the Washington Performing Arts Society’s season-long exploration of the Silk Road. Tickets are $30.

Sixth & I Historic Synagogue Fri., May 19, 8 p.m.

A.R. Rahman: The Intimate Concert Tour

From Bollywood to Hollywood, this Grammy and Academy Award-winning musician is one of the world’s most prolific film composers — he was the mastermind behind “Slumdog Millionaire’s” award-winning score and he mixes genres spanning Eastern classical, pop, world music and rap to create his astonishing compositions. Tickets are $45 to $175.

Wolf Trap Filene Center Fri., May 22, 7:30 p.m.

Julian Schwarz, Cello Marika Bournaki, Piano

Born 1991 into a musical family, Julian Schwarz is already being recognized as one of the finest cellists now before the public, winning first prize in the inaugural Schoenfeld International String Competition in Hong Kong in 2013. Tickets are $70, including wine, hors d’oeuvres and sweets; for information, visit www.embassyseries.org.

Embassy of Austria Sat., May 23, 2:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Live Broadcast: Eurovision Song Contest

The 60th Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Vienna between May 18 and 23, 2015 under the motto Building Bridges. Join 40 countries and 600 million viewers in celebrating the grand finale of the world’s largest music contest when the Austrian Embassy hosts the Eurovision Song Contest Finale 2015 broadcasted live from Stadthalle Vienna in Austria. Tickets are $13.50 and include food and drinks.

Embassy of Austria Thu., May 28, 7:30 p.m.

Evening of Fado

Pedro Botas performs an evening of fado, a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with sentiments of resignation, fatefulness and melancholia (loosely captured by the word saudade, or longing). Tickets are $150, including reception and wine; for information, visit

Swiss-German

journey.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., May 22

Dark Star: HR Gigers Welt Directed by Belinda Sallin (Switzerland, 2015, 35 min.)

Eat Sleep Die Directed by Gabriela Pichler (Sweden, 2012, 104 min.)

A young Eastern European immigrant working in Sweden is faced with a painful choice when she’s laid off from her factory job in the name of “ efficiencies” (Swedish, Serbo-Croatian and Serbian).

AFI Silver Theatre Wed., May 13, 7:20 p.m.

www.embassyseries.org.

Portuguese Residence

THEATER May 1 to 23

Throughout his life, HR Giger had inhabited the world of the uncanny, a dark universe on the brink of many an abyss. It was the only way this amiable, modest and humorous man was able to keep his fears in check.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Opens Fri., May 22

ing in the five-a-side pub league in Hull, a Yorkshire fishing city that’s seen better days (as have these athletes). Tickets are $44 to $88.

The Studio Theatre May 13 to June 21

Ecuador Magico / Magical Ecuador

The Price

Gunston Arts Center – Theater Two

Olney Theatre Center

Through May 3

Sat., May 16, 7 p.m.

From afar Anita of the Rivers arrives, the beautiful queen of fountains and flowers, both depraved and eloquent. She will confront her ancestors from a lost city in the Andes; she will find herself among her peers from the newspaper “The Broom,” those characters who shaped an era of Ecuadoran journalism.

Tickets are $25; for information, visit www.teatrodelaluna.org (in Spanish with live English dubbing).

Man of La Mancha

As Miguel de Cervantes presents his tale of knight errant Don Quixote, his journey comes alive in a play-within-the-play, featuring loyal friends, troubled maidens, giant monsters and brave knights. Please call for ticket information.

Shakespeare Theatre Sidney Harman Hall Through May 3

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Helen Hayes Award-winning director and playwright Aaron Posner, known for his Chekhov-inspired plays, lends his hand to this riotous sendup, which satirizes characters and themes from Anton Chekhov’s classics. Tickets are $45 to $90.

Arena Stage May 9 to 21

Washington National Opera: Cinderella

Rossini’s retelling of the Cinderella story adds a few twists in a whimsical production featuring two opera singers alternating in the title role: Isabel Leonard, the 2013 Richard Tucker Award winner, and Tara Erraught, making her U.S. debut. Tickets are $25 to $300.

Kennedy Center Opera House Through May 10

Murder Ballad

Studio Theatre will transform one of its theater spaces into a gritty, immersive dive bar to present this explosive rock musical, staged cabaret-style, about an old flame, a dangerous passion and a love triangle headed for ignition. Tickets are $45 to $80.

The Studio Theatre May 12 to June 21

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead In a world where heads always wins and pirates can happen to anyone, this fabulously inventive, existentialist tragicomedy thrusts two of Shakespeare’s most incidental characters into the limelight. Tickets are $30 to $75.

Folger Theatre May 13 to June 21

Jumpers for Goalposts

Hope springs eternal in the post-game locker room of Barely Athletic, an amateur soccer team compet-

May 2015

In an overstuffed New York City attic apartment, two estranged brothers meet to sell off what remains of their deceased father’s furniture and find themselves in an emotional renegotiation of the past in Arthur Miller’s much-lauded 1968 story about story about the cost of the choices we make when caring for our families. Tickets are $38 to $65.

Opera in the Outfield: Cinderella

The Washington National Opera celebrates its seventh season of free opera simulcasts at Nationals Park with a performance of Rossini’s charming romantic comedy “Cinderella.” This dazzling production has been acclaimed worldwide for its witty characterizations, rainbow-bright sets and costumes, and easy-to-follow English translation, making it a perfect opera for the entire family.

Gates open at 5 p.m.

Nationals Park Through May 20

Freedom’s Song

This epic musical features the words of Abraham Lincoln and music inspired by the letters of those who lived through the Civil War, evoking the soaring hopes and tragic losses of real people through a series of highly theatrical vignettes. Tickets are $20 to $69.

Ford’s Theatre May 28 to June 21

The Trap

Ambassador Theater — in partnership with the Polish Embassy and George Washington University Department of Theatre and Dance — presents Tadeusz Rózewicz’s “The Trap,” a collage of events, images and sounds that deeply affected writer Franz Kafka. Fears and nightmares, Kafka’s real-life companions, found their way into many of his short stories and novels, which continue to fascinate and baffle readers all over the world. The play is not only his poetic farewell to Kafka and a psychological portrait of an artist, but also alters conventions of time and space by trapping the artist in the ultimate nightmare of the 20th century: the Holocaust. Tickets are $20 to $40; for information, visit www.aticc.org.

XX Bldg 814 20th St., NW Through May 31

The Originalist

Four-time Helen Hayes Award winner Edward Gero stars as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in a daring world premiere about the brilliant, but polarizing justice, his bright, new, liberal clerk, and their clash over one of the most incendiary cases ever to reach the nation’s highest court.

Tickets are $55 to $90.

Arena Stage

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[ around town ]

EVENTS LISTING **Admission is free unless otherwise noted.

All information on event venues can be found on The Diplomat Web site at www.washdiplomat.com. Times and locations are subject to change. Unless listed, please call venue for specific event times and hours of operation.

color and conceptual art from the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition demonstrates the richness of the National Gallery’s photography collection.

National Gallery of Art May 3 to Sept. 13

ART Through May 1

Fordlandia: The Lost City of Henry Ford

This series of photographs, completed in 2012, reveals what has become of Fordlandia, the American town built in the Brazilian rainforest by tycoon Henry Ford. Today, the town is a post-industrial wasteland, complete with prefabricated industrial sheds from Michigan and American clapperboard houses. More curious still is that, in spite of no new economy or employer in the area, Fordlandia is coming back to life.

Art Museum of the Americas Through May 1

gute aussichten: new german photography 2014/2015

In its eleventh year, the eight “gute aussichten 2014/2015” award winners are hot on life’s heels. This young generation of photographers is after the most basic and existential questions of life: the banality of death and what remains — or follows the deceased and vanishes without a trace — migration, discrimination, loneliness, isolation and desperation, all of which are put face to face with happiness, cognizance, diversity and creative energy.

Goethe-Institut Through May 3

Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence

The first major retrospective exhibition of paintings by the imaginative Italian Renaissance master Piero di Cosimo features 44 of the artist’s most compelling paintings, including fanciful mythologies, powerful religious works (one on loan for the first time from the church in Italy for which it was created 500 years ago), and sensitive portraits.

National Gallery of Art May 3 to July 26

Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns

This first comprehensive exhibition to examine the history of metalpoint — the art of drawing with a metal stylus on a specially prepared ground — presents some 90 drawings from the late Middle Ages to the present, from the collections of the British Museum, the National Gallery of Art and other major museums in the United States and Europe.

National Gallery of Art May 3 to July 26

In Light of the Past: Twenty-Five Years of Photography at the National Gallery of Art

Highlighting exquisite 19th-century works and turn-of-the-century pictorialist photographs; exceptional examples of international modernism from the 1920s and 1930s and seminal mid-20th-century American photography; as well as photographs exploring new directions in

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The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art

In the decades since 1990, the concepts of time and memory have been frequently explored by photographers who seek not simply to reflect the world but to illuminate how photography constructs our understanding of it. This exhibition explores the work of 26 contemporary artists who investigate the complex and resonant relationship of photography to time, memory and history.

National Gallery of Art May 4 to May 15

Go West

In the last couple of centuries people came to the so-called New World for very different reasons. In the context of the project “Go West 2015,” artists and scientists Jutta Fischel, Markus Kupferblum and Konrad Stania paint a vivid collage of opinions and history on why people “go West.” The centerpiece of the installment will be projections of recorded interviews with Austrians and others who have already gone west.

Embassy of Austria May 5 to July 3

Take It Right Back: Works by Paula Doepfner

In her graphic and sculptural pieces, Berlin-based artist Paula Doepfner works with natural shapes, materials and products such as flowers and ice, alongside iron and glass, as material ways of conveying stories, processes, feelings and utopias.

Goethe-Institut May 8 to 25

Dance of Light

This solo exhibition features 70 radiant, spiritual works that evoke an abstract vision of the natural world by Bang Hai Ja, celebrated as being among the first generation of professional artists from Korea to embrace abstract art in the modern era (The artist and French art critic Valère Bertrand will offer introductory talks at the free public opening reception on May 8 at 6:30 p.m.; RSVP at www.KoreaCultureDC.org).

Korean Cultural Center Through May 10

Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare

Highlighting the multimedia work of the legendary Surrealist artist, “Man Ray— Human Equations” explores the intersection of art and science that defined a significant component of modern art on both sides of the Atlantic at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Phillips Collection Through May 10

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Conceptual Forms and Mathematical Models This exhibition features approximately

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

May 2015

five photographic works and three sculptures by Hiroshi Sugimoto — one of Japan’s most important contemporary artists — inspired by Man Ray’s 1930s photographs.

voices from medieval poetry and images culled from mythology to explore the relationship between states of transcendence and the realities of culture and personal experience.

The Phillips Collection

American University Museum at Katzen

Through May 15

Through May 25

Francesco Nonino: Selected Works

Lost and Found: Young Art from Lithuania

Francesco Nonino is one of few Italian photographers whose work has been acquired by both the Library of Congress and the Phillips Collection. The exhibit at the Embassy of Italy will include some recent works from two series: “Come La Vergogna” and “Atmospheres.” As an homage to his mother, Italian traditions and to introduce the theme of the upcoming EXPO 2015, some photos of his mother’s hands making pasta will also be on display. Viewings are by appointment only; for information visit www.iicwashington.esteri.it.

Embassy of Italy Through May 15

Hands-On Urbanism.

The Right to Green

The research-based exhibition is dedicated to the history of the idea of appropriating land in urban space. Since the shockwave of modernization that accompanied industrialization, towns and cities worldwide have had to face some very significant challenges. City-dwellers, who have always found a number of solutions in crisis situations, are involved in bottom-up urban development, as fruit and vegetable gardens led to other forms of collective cohesion, neighborliness and fair distribution.

University of Maryland May 16 to Jan. 2

Peacock Room Remix: Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre

“Peacock Room REMIX” centers on “Filthy Lucre,” an immersive interior by painter Darren Waterston who reinterprets James McNeill Whistler’s famed Peacock Room as a resplendent ruin, an aesthetic space that is literally overburdened by its own excesses — of materials, history, and creativity. Like “Filthy Lucre” and the original Peacock Room, this exhibition invites viewers to consider the complex relationships among art, money and the passage of time.

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery May 18 to Sept. 20

Shirin Neshat: Facing History

This major exhibition of works by Iranian-born, New York-based video artist, photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat is the first to place Neshat’s work in the context of the history of modern Iran, a significant influence on her career.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Through May 24

Remembrances of Voices Past

“Remembrances” features paintings by Indian artist V. Ramesh, for whom an act of devotion, or Bhakti, seems not only an apt social response to existential tragedies, but also a quest for freedom.

Painting primarily with oils on large-scale canvas, his oeuvre reveals a preoccupation with meditative terrain, incorporating

Curatorial practice students from American University and the Vilnius Academy of Arts are developing their skills in the management of art as well as promotion of the artistic ambitions of their fellow students through this international exchange of exhibitions.

Young Lithuanian artists exhibiting are working in a wide range of media varying from traditional craftsmanship to unique technological solutions, and demonstrate the varied influence of the Vilnius Academy of Arts on the creativity of its students.

American University Museum at Katzen Through May 30

25 Years / 25 Artists

This visual arts exhibition celebrating the Mexican Cultural Institute’s first 25 years presents works from several generations and artistic movements. From the contemporaries of the third stage of Mexican muralism, to the members of the “Ruptura” in the 1960s, this exhibit explores art that proposed new forms of expression and changed the way art was seen in Mexico.

Mexican Cultural Institute Through May 31

Style in Chinese Landscape Painting: The Yuan Legacy

Landscape painting is one of the most outstanding achievements of Chinese culture. Key styles in this genre emerged during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) and are still followed today.

Freer Gallery of Art Through May 31

The Traveler’s Eye: Scenes of Asia

Featuring more than 100 works created over the past five centuries, “The Traveler’s Eye: Scenes of Asia” provides glimpses of travels across the Asian continent, from pilgrimages and research trips to expeditions for trade and tourism.

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Through June 7

Perspectives: Chiharu Shiota

Performance and installation artist Chiharu Shiota, Japan’s representative at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, will recreate a monumental yet intimate work in the Sackler pavilion that amasses personal memories through an accumulation of nearly 400 individual shoes, each with a note from the donor describing lost individuals and past moments.

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Through June 7

Splendor and Surprise

More than 80 remarkable boxes, coffers, chests, and other containers reveal the beautiful and unexpected ways that cultures have contained their most treasured items and everyday objects from the 17th through the 20th century.

Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens

Through June 7

Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips, a young paleontologist and geologist, headed one of the largest archaeological expeditions to remote South Arabia (present-day Yemen) from 1949 to 1951. Through a selection of unearthed objects as well as film and photography shot by the expedition team, the exhibition highlights Phillips’s key finds, recreates his adventures (and misadventures), and conveys the thrill of discovery on this important great archaeological frontier.

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Through June 14

Zen, Tea, and Chinese Art in Medieval Japan

Zen Buddhism, tea and ink painting — well-known expressions of Japanese culture — have their roots in Chinese arts and ideas brought to medieval Japan from the late 12th to the 16th century. Chinese and Japanese paintings, lacquer ware and ceramics illuminate this remarkable period of cultural contact and synthesis.

Freer Gallery of Art Through June 20

Latvian-American Artist Laimons Eglitis: Retrospective

Following the creation of the Organization of American States in 1948, its Visual Arts Section, under the direction of Cuban José Gómez Sicre, began an ambitious exhibition program that would further awareness of the art of the Caribbean and Central and South America in the United States.

Sicre’s support for international modernism also allied him with U.S. Cold War Warriors, who used freedom of expression as a tool in the cultural and intellectual struggle against the Soviets.

This retrospective of Latvian-American artist Laimons Eglitis (1929-2007) is a tribute to his prolific life. Born in Latvia, the artist fled his homeland during World War II, settling in Philadelphia and later painting and teaching in the Baltimore area. He was a semi-abstract painter who worked in oils, acrylics and watercolors, whose paintings won many prizes over the years and are represented in museums and private collections all over the world. “Mysticism and symbolism is mainly having fun with forms,” Eglitis once said, “but it is also the desire to involve the viewer in the painting process by offering the opportunity to look for a translation of the symbolism and the meaning of the mysticism.”

Art Museum of the Americas

Embassy of Latvia Art Space

Through June 7

Libertad de Expresión: The Art Museum of the Americas and Cold War Politics

The Washington Diplomat

May 2015

Through June 28

Moving Forward, Looking Back: Journeys Across the Old Spanish Trail

During A road trip across the Southwest, Spanish photojournalist Janire Nájera AND her assistant Matt Wright followed IN the footsteps of trader Antonio Armijo, who opened the route of the Old Spanish Trail between the states of New Mexico and California in the 19th century. Nájera captured her experience along the route in a daily log, a book and a photography exhibition that will travel across the U.S. and premieres in D.C. Former Spanish Ambassador’s Residence Through July 2015

War & Art: Destruction and Protection of Italian Cultural Heritage during World War I

This photographic exhibition illustrates the Italian people’s struggle to protect their cultural patrimony from the ravages of war. A century later, the images not only document early preservation efforts, but have become works of art in their own right, reminding us of the enduring struggle to save the highest expressions of the human spirit from the degradations and savagery of war.

Woodrow Wilson House Through Aug. 2

From the Library: Florentine Publishing in the Renaissance

This exhibition presents a variety of books from the late 15th through the early 17th century and explores the development of publishing related to the artistic and scholarly community in Florence.

National Gallery of Art Through Aug. 9

Jacob Lawrence: Struggle …

From the History of the American People

Produced between 1954 and 1956, Jacob Lawrence’s “Struggle … From the History of the American People” portrays scenes from American history, chronicling events from the Revolutionary War through the great westward expansion of 1817.

The Phillips Collection Through Aug. 23

Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude

To mark the 300th anniversary of the passing of the Longitude Act in 1714, this landmark exhibition tells the extraordinary story of the race to determine longitude (east-west position) at sea, helping to solve the problem of navigation and saving seafarers from terrible fates including shipwreck and starvation.

Folger Shakespeare Library Through Aug. 30

Hot to Cold: An Odyssey of Architectural Adaptation

On the heels of its summer blockbuster “BIG Maze,” the international design firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) returns to take visitors from the hottest to the coldest parts of our planet and explore how BIG’s design solutions are shaped by their cultural and climatic contexts. More than 60 three-dimensional models will be suspended at the second-floor balconies of the museum’s historic Great Hall in an unprecedented use of this public space.

National Building Museum Through Sept. 7

Watch This! Revelations in Media Art

This exhibit of pioneering and contempo-

EVENTS Highlight

Passport Takes Over Town It’s the one time of year when dozens of Washington’s embassies fling their doors open to the public for a global tour around town. The wildly successful Passport DC, now in its 8th year, present s a month-long celebration in May of international programs and cultural events that regularly attract hundreds of fans.

“Passport DC is a profound way for people to learn by experience. It provides a unique opportunity for people to uncover the similarities among nations across the globe and compare their art, dance, music, textiles, food and so much more,” said Steven Shulman, executive director of Cultural Tourism DC, the nonprofit that organizes the citywide event. “Passport DC is the next best thing to international travel. It showcases a fascinating array of customs from around the globe.”

Among the highlights: The National Cathedral Flower Mart May 1-May 2, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Each spring, gardening and flower aficionados throughout the mid-Atlantic flock to the Flower Mart at the Washington National Cathedral to see floral creations from more than 20 embassies. This year, Flower Mart honors the continent of Asia and will include over 80 vendors displaying artisanal gifts, festival foods, international musical and dance performances, children’s rides and cathedral and garden tours.

Around the World Embassy Tour May 2, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; 10 am to 4 pm Participants travel the globe at the Around the World Embassy Tour as they experience the food, art, dance, fashion, music, innovations and manufactured goods of different countries from Azerbaijan to Morocco to Ukraine. More than 50 embassies opened their doors to visitors last year, allowing guests to pet alpacas, taste international cuisines, learn indigenous dances and more.

Shortcut to Europe: European Union Embassies’ Open House May 9, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; www.EUOpenHouse.org The European Union Delegation to the U.S. and the embassies of the EU member states invite visitors to experience the authentic music, dance, food, film and art of these 28 distinctive nations.

National Asian Heritage Festival: Fiesta Asia Street Fair May 16, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; www.AsiaHeritageFoundation.org

rary artworks that trace the evolution of a continuously emerging medium celebrates artists who are engaged in a creative revolution — one shaped as much by developments in science and technology as by style or medium.

Smithsonian American Art Museum Through Sept. 13

Chief S.O. Alonge: Photographer to the Royal Court of Benin, Nigeria This retrospective showcases the work of noted Nigerian photographer Chief S.O. Alonge, the first indigenous photographer of the Royal Court of Benin, in conjunction with royal arts from the Benin kingdom. The collection of historic photographs was captured on Kodak glass-plate negatives and documents more than 50 years of the ritual, pageantry and regalia of the obas (kings), their wives and retainers.

National Museum of African Art

DANCE May 6 to 17

The Washington Ballet: ALICE (in wonderland)

“ALICE (in wonderland)” was an instant hit when it premiered in 2012. A work of rich and impressive creativity that is full of whimsical charm and a feeling for the absurd, the visual splendor and imaginative choreography of the Washington Ballet’s production was highly popular with adults as well as children. Tickets are $46 to $135.

Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

May 13 to 15

The Washington Ballet: Tour-de-Force: Serenade

The company’s third “Tour-de-Force” gala-style program of classical and contemporary ballets includes audience favorites and masterworks from the canon, star-turns by The Washington Ballet’s international dancers and displays of virtuosity. Tickets are $41 to $135.

Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

DISCUSSIONS Tue., May 19

Milan at the Center of the World: A Report from the Expo Milan has captured the attention of the world as the site of its Expo from May 1 to October 31. This is the first such fair to have a specific theme — “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” — that looks to the future of sustainability in the context of taste, health, culture and pleasure.

Fred Plotkin, world-renowned expert on everything Italian, will speak at the Expo on its opening weekend and then comes to Washington to describe to Americans the great variety of offerings at the Expo as well as the U.S. role in it.

Italian Cultural Institute Fri., May 29, 6:30 p.m.

Robert Dassanowsky: Arts Gratia Austriae

Professor Robert Dassanowsky discusses the current debate over the nature of Hollywood’s pre-war relationship with Nazi Germany, cinema under “Austrofascism” (1933-38) and its posi-

Photo: Jason Morenz / Passport DC

Visitors line up to tour the Venezuelan Embassy during Passport DC, an annual month-long showcase of international culture in May hosted by Cultural Tourism DC. The Asia Heritage Foundation’s annual festival, held on Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, between 3rd and 6th Streets, features outdoor craft exhibits, cooking and martial arts demonstrations, a talent show, flash mob dancing and much more. Voted numerous times as the Best Street Fair in Washington, Fiesta Asia highlights over 1,000 performers on five stages representing more than 20 cultures.

Embassy Chef Challenge May 20, 6 to 9 p.m.

Cultural Tourism DC’s annual fundraiser gives you access to one of D.C.’s bestkept secrets: world-class embassy chefs. More than 10 embassy chefs will present small plates of their countries’ signature delicacies and battle in D.C.’s premier international culinary competition, held at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. A panel of celebrity chefs and food critics will select the winner of the Judge’s Choice Award, while guests vote for their favorite chef as the People’s Choice winner. The evening will conclude with a live and silent auction, featuring unique D.C. experiences.

For information, visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.

tive American reception, which has been unaccountably overlooked. During this era, Vienna turned to Hollywood to strengthen its independent film production. Admission is free but registration is required and can be made at http:// acfdc.org.

Embassy of Austria

GALAS Sat., May 2, 6 p.m.

Washington Performing Arts Gala & Auction

Always a highpoint of the busy D.C. cultural and social calendar, this year’s Washington Performing Arts Gala & Auction will focus on the 40th anniversary and the proposed expansion of the Embassy Adoption Program, a partnership between Washington Performing Arts and D.C. Public Schools that each year currently pairs fifth- or sixth-grade classes with approximately 50 embassies for an academic year’s worth of cross-cultural learning and enrichment activities. In recognition of the Embassy Adoption Program, WPAS will present D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson with its inaugural Leadership in Arts Education Award. The evening begins at 6 p.m. with a Kentucky Derby Watch Party, followed by cocktails, silent auction, dinner and performances.

Tickets are $700; for information, visit www.washingtonperformingarts.org/ support/gala.aspx.

Marriott Marquis Mon., May 11, 5:30 p.m.

Annual Dinner and Mock Trial This marks the 20th year that the

May 2015

Shakespeare Theatre Company has put on its Mock Trial, which this year will be presided by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accompanied by Justice Stephen Breyer, as well as Chief Judge Merrick Garland and Judge Patricia Millett. Following dinner, a special session of the Supreme Court of La Mancha will review the decisions of the Family Court to declare Don Quixote mentally incompetent and his subsequent placement under the guardianship of his niece, Antonia.

Tickets are $350.

Sidney Harman Hall Fri., May 15

Birds of a Feather Gala Join art lovers, philanthropists, diplomats and artists for the sumptuous Birds of a Feather Gala to celebrate American art and a spectacular new work. Guests start their evening at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery with a champagne reception and an exclusive preview of “Peacock Room REMIX: Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre,” on view for the first time in Washington. The dazzling event continues over dinner at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium. Guests then “flock together” at the after-party and enjoy drinks, dessert and dancing with a special performance by BETTY, the rock band that composed and recorded the mesmerizing soundscape for “Filthy Lucre.” Tickets are $1,000; for information, visit www.asia.si.edu/ events/galas/birds-of-a-feather/.

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

See Events, page 39 The Washington Diplomat Page 41

DIPLOMATIC SPOTLIGHT 60th Corcoran Ball

The Washington Diplomat

May 2015

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT MEDIA SPONSOR

Corcoran Ball Chair Saree Pitt, left, and Molly Rolandi, chair of the Corcoran Women’s Committee, attend the 60th annual Corcoran Ball held at the George Washington University’s newly opened Textile Museum, where the black-tie fundraiser celebrated the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s historic collaboration with the George Washington University and National Gallery of Art.

From left, Keith Enoch, Executive Director of the George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium Maryann Lombardi, Maryam Demaine and artist Windsor Demaine attend the 60th Corcoran Ball, featuring three-course seated dinner and dancing to music by the band Fresh Air.

From left, Michael Andrews, John Collins, Cindy Lackey and Michael Lackey of Mayer Brown attend the 60th Corcoran Ball, supported by Eric Michael of Occasions Caterers and Peter Grazzini of Perfect Settings.

From left, Director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Kim Sajet, Charles Youles and Betty Youles attend the 60th Corcoran Ball, which benefited the newly established Corcoran Women’s Committee Scholarship Endowment Fund for students at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University.

From left, David Fenstermaker of Fenstermaker Financial Group, former Chairman of EADS North America Ralph Crosby, Digital Marketing and Communications Coordinator for Sibley Memorial Hospital Amelie Colwell and Director of Construction at Sibley Memorial Hospital Greg Ward attend the 60th annual Corcoran Ball.

From left, former Interim Director and President of the Corcoran Gallery of Art Peggy Loar, Pamela Julyan, Corcoran General Counsel David Julyan and Associate Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations at the George Washington University Law School Richard Collins attend the 60th Corcoran Ball, celebrating the partnership between the Corcoran, the oldest private museum in D.C., and the George Washington University and National Gallery of Art.

Barbara Sullivan, left, and Andrea Weiswasser attend the 60th annual Corcoran Ball, organized by the Corcoran Women’s Committee with help from 75 volunteers who log over 700 hours of work.

From left, writer Shigeko Bork, consultant Missy Cook and Collette Bruce attend the 60th annual Corcoran Ball, for which The Washington Diplomat was a media sponsor.

From left, Managing Director of the George Washington University Confucius Institute Taoran Sun, Chief of Staff to the GW Office of the President Barbara Porter and Dean of the GW Columbian College of Arts and Sciences Ben Vinson attend the 60th Corcoran Ball held at the George Washington University’s recently opened Textile Museum.

Lebanon Awards

PHOTO: ATFL

From left, American Task Force for Lebanon (ATFL) President and CEO Edward M. Gabriel, former Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), ATFL Executive Director George Cody, and former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham attend the 17th ATFL Awards Gala at the Fairmont Hotel.

PHOTO: ATFL

Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.) attends the 17th annual American Task Force for Lebanon (ATFL) Awards Gala at the Fairmont Hotel.

From left, Susan Kelly, director of global outreach for Absolute Travel; former President of the National Geographic Society Tim Kelly; Dr. Michelle Garner and Dr. Stephanie Omokaro attend the 60th annual Corcoran Ball, which has netted millions of dollars since its inaugural event in 1956.

PHOTO: ATFL

PHOTO: ATFL

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

42

The Washington Diplomat

From left, Jim McLaughlin, Dana Hager, Stuyve Pierrepont of Farr, Miller & Washington LLC and Melissa McLaughlin attend the 60th Corcoran Ball held at the George Washington University’s recently opened Textile Museum.

3Renowned Lebanese-born geneticist Dr. Huda Zoghbi of Baylor College of Medicine, left, is honored by Charif Souki, chairman and CEO of Cheniere Energy, at the American Task Force for Lebanon Awards Gala.

3Pulitzer Prizewinning CNN correspondent Sara Ganim was one of two LebaneseAmericans honored by the American Task Force for Lebanon (ATFL) for their contributions in their fields, at the ATFL Awards Gala.

4From left, Nicole Chedid, Ambassador of Lebanon Antoine Chedid and Minister of Education for Lebanon Elias N. Bou Saab attend the 17th annual American Task Force for Lebanon Awards Gala at the Fairmont Hotel.

Marjorie and Samuel J. Muscarella attend the 60th Corcoran Ball held at the George Washington Univer sity’s recently opened Textile Museum.

4From left, Vice President of Business Development for Interaudi Bank Briana Powell, Gamila Karjawally and founder and CEO of Home Health Connection Shahin Mafi attend the 17th annual American Task Force for Lebanon Awards Gala at the Fairmont Hotel.

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

Senior Vice President at Interaudi Bank Salim A. Abboud, left, and Rana Karjawally join nearly 400 guests, including members of Congress, the Lebanese-American community and the diplomatic corps, for the 17th annual American Task Force for Lebanon Awards Gala.

PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT

May 2015

‘Swan Lake’

Misty Copeland of the American Ballet Theatre, left, joins Artistic Director of the Washington Ballet Septime Webre for the opening night reception of the Washington Ballet’s production of “Swan Lake” at the Kennedy Center.

Copeland, a pioneering African American ballet dancer, makes her American debut in the lead role of “Swan Lake.”

Book Party Esther Coop­ er­smith, legendary Wash­­ington hostess and former U.S. Repre­sen­ tative to the U.N., throws a book party photo: gail scott at her Kalo­ rama residence for her son, Texas A&M professor Jonathan Coopersmith, whose book “Faxed: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine” is being published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Biochemist Sachiko Kuno, co-founder of the S&R Foundation, welcomes guests to Halcyon House in Georgetown to celebrate the opening night of the Washington Ballet’s “Swan Lake.” Halcyon House serves as a launch pad and creative space for 21st century problem-solvers; the Evermay Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble group presented by S&R Foundation, performs Tchaikovsky’s music in “Swan Lake.”

From left, Kevin Chaffee of Washington Life, philanthropist Annie Totah and Renaud de Viel Castel, general manager at Execucar DC, attend the opening night reception for the Washington Ballet’s “Swan Lake” held at Halcyon House in Georgetown.

From left, Tim Bork, Shigeko Bork and Dr. Ryuji Ueno, co-founder of the Sucampo Group and of the S&R Foundation, attend the opening night reception for the Washington Ballet’s “Swan Lake” at Halcyon House, home of the Halcyon Incubator, a residency program for social entrepreneurs.

From left, co-founder of Memunatu Magazine Mariama Kabia, District Restaur­ ant Group founder Gaynor Jablonski, event specialist Christi Rich, Executive Director of the Student Language Exchange Amelia Friedman and co-founder of the Start Line venture Albert Ferguson attend the opening night reception for the Washington Ballet’s “Swan Lake.”

Fiji Farewell

photo: institute for education

Women in Power Luncheon

photos: gail scott

From left, Ambassador of Jamaica Stephen Vasciannie and his wife Lisa Ann Vasciannie bid farewell to Queenie Thompson and Ambassador of Fiji Winston Thompson, who are leaving Washington to return to Fiji.

From left, Queenie Thompson and Ambassador of Fiji Winston Thompson are joined by hostess Erna Radifera and Chargé d’Affaires of the Fiji Embassy Akuila Vuira at the Thompsons’ farewell party.

The Finnish Embassy and Institute for Education (IFE) hosted a women’s luncheon and discussion on “America’s Place in a Turbulent World” at the Finnish Residence. In attendance were, from left: Ambassador of Liechtenstein Claudia Fritsche; Ambassador of Tanzania Liberata Mulamula; Ambassador of Uganda Oliver Wonekha; Ambassador of Finland Ritva Koukku-Ronde; Nina Easton, senior editor and columnist for Fortune; Beverly Kirk of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Ambassador of Mozambique Amélia Matos Sumbana; and coach Kathy Kemper of IFE.

Ambassador of Liechten­ stein Claudia Fritsche, left, and Dr. Michael Olding of the GW Cosmetic Surgery Center attend the opening night reception for the Washington Ballet’s “Swan Lake,” considered by many to be the greatest classical ballet of all time.

Magic of Montmartre

From left, Ambassador of Liechtenstein Claudia Fritsche, attorney Craig Cobine and Tim Cox, CEO of the Washington Home & Community Hospices, attend the fundraiser “The Magic of Montmartre” at the French Embassy to benefit the Washington Home & Community Hospices, which provides services for area residents who are elderly, chronically or terminally ill.

From left, Shannon Dunn; Dr. Caren Palese-Venturi; Sharon Collins Casey, chair of the board of the Washington Home & Community Hospices; Dr. Mark Venturi; and Alicia Downs attend “The Magic of Montmartre” fundraiser at the French Embassy to benefit the Washington Home & Community Hospices, founded in 1888.

From left, Jennifer Crier Johnston, special programming coordinator at the Kennedy Center, PR consultant Jan Du Plain and Lynn Van Fleit, founder and executive director of the Diplomacy Matters Institute, attend “The Magic of Montmartre” fundraiser at the French Embassy to benefit the Washington Home & Community Hospices.

Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave of the Light of Healing Hope Foundation, left, and photographer Didi Cutler attend “The Magic of Montmartre” fundraiser to benefit the Washington Home & Community Hospices, which provides residential and rehabilitation care, as well as hospice care at patients’ homes and its Williams House, the only in-patient hospice in D.C.

Former Meridian International Center President Walter Cutler, left, and former U.S. Assistant Chief of Protocol Lawrence Dunham attend “The Magic of Montmartre” fundraiser at the French Embassy to benefit the Washington Home & Community Hospices.

3From left, Nina Pillsbury; Philip Pillsbury; Judith Terra, chair of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities; interior designer Barbara Hawthorn; and Cary Pollak of DC Digest attend “The Magic of Montmartre” fundraiser at the French Embassy to benefit the Washington Home & Community Hospices.

4From left, Ray Mahmood, Shaista Mahmood, philanthropist Annie Totah and Leo Sahakianattend “The Magic of Montmartre” fundraiser at the French Embassy to benefit the Washington Home & Community Hospices.

Among the highlights of “The Magic of Montmartre” fundraiser at the French Embassy to benefit the Washington Home & Community Hospices were: Kir Royal drinks courtesy of Marie Antoinette; a French market of clothes, art and cuisine; and a caricaturist.

May 2015

The Washington Diplomat Page 43

AROUNDTHEWORLD

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

HOLIDAYS CORRECTION: The April 2015 issue listed April 22 as the Namibian Independence Day. Namibia’s National Day is March 21.

ALBANIA May 1: Labor Day ALGERIA May 1: Labor Day ANDORRA May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 24: Pentecost ANGOLA May 1: International Workers’ Day May 25: Africa Day ANTIGUA and BARBUDA May 1: Labor Day May 25: Whit Monday

ARGENTINA May 1: Labor Day May 25: Anniversary of the May Revolution ARMENIA May 1: Labor Day May 9: Victory and Peace Day May 28: Republic Day AUSTRIA May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Whit Monday

May 14: Ascension

National Emblem and National Flag May 9: Victory Day BELGIUM May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 24: Whit Sunday May 25: Whit Monday BELIZE May 1: Labor Day May 24: Commonwealth Day

AZERBAIJAN May 9: Victory Day May 28: Republic Day

BENIN May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Whit Monday

BAHAMAS May 25: Whit Monday

BOLIVIA May 1: Labor Day

BARBADOS May 1: Labor Day May 25: Whit Monday

BOSNIA and HERZEGOVINA May 1: Labor Day

BELARUS May 1: Labor Day May 9: Day of

BOTSWANA May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension

BRAZIL May 1: Labor Day

May 20: National Day

BULGARIA May 1: Labor Day May 6: St. George’s Day/Day of the Bulgarian Army May 24: Day of the Slavic Alphabet and Bulgarian Culture

CANADA May 18: Victoria Day

CONGO, REPUBLIC OF May 1: Labor Day

CAPE VERDE May 1: Labor Day

COSTA RICA May 1: Labor Day

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Africa Day May 25: Pentecost Monday

CÔTE D’IVOIRE May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Whit Monday

BURKINA FASO May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension BURMA (MYANMAR) May 1: May Day BURUNDI May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension CAMBODIA May 1: Labor Day May 13: Royal Ploughing Ceremony CAMEROON May 1: Labor Day

APPOINTMENTS Brunei Darussalam Izzat Zakaria assumed the position of second secretary on March 2, replacing Nadiah Zulkifli, who departed the post March 1. Zakaria previously served as a research officer with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Equatorial Guinea Miguel Ntutumu Evuna Andeme became ambassador of Equatorial Guinea to the United States on Feb. 23, 2015.

Prior to his current appointment, Ambassador Ambassador Evuna Miguel Ntutumu Andeme was the Evuna Andeme general director of Cabinet at the Department of Missions in the Presidency of the Republic in Malabo, where his responsibilities included preparing statements, speeches and correspondence for the president. Previously, he was director general for administrative affairs for the presidency and a procurement and contracts advisor for Hess Corp. in Equatorial Guinea. Ambassador Evuna Andeme received a bachelor’s degree in international studies from La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 2003.

While at La Roche, he co-founded the International Forum of African Students.

Kyrgyzstan Kadyr M. Toktogulov became ambassador of the Kyrgyz Republic to the United States on Feb. 23, 2015, Ambassador having most Kadyr M. recently served as Toktogulov press secretary to Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev since December 2011. Before joining the Office of the President,

44

CONGO, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC May 1: Labor Day

Ambassador Toktogulov was chief of the Informati on Policy Department at the Office of the Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan, in charge of coordinating media relations for the prime minister, his deputies and key ministries of the government. He also coordinated media coverage of the government of the Kyrgyz Republic. Ambassador Toktogulov, who was born April 28, 1980, in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, has extensive experience in journalism, having worked as a correspondent for such news organizations as the Associated Press (2003-06) and Dow Jones Newswires and contributed stories to the Wall Street Journal (2006-11). He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications from the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. He also studied as an exchange student at Ankara University in Turkey (1998-99) and at Ithaca College in New York (2001-02). In addition to Kyrgyz, he speaks fluent Russian, English and Turkish.

Peru Luis Miguel Castilla Rubio became ambassador of Peru to the United States on Feb. 23, 2015, having previously served as Ambassador minister of econo- Luis Miguel my and finance of Castilla Rubio Peru from 2011 to 2014 under the administration of President Ollanta Humala. During his tenure, he implemented major reforms to attract foreign direct investment to Peru, spur economic growth, reduce poverty and foster economic and social development. He promoted a series of second-generation reforms in infrastructure public-private partnerships, civil service, fiscal rules, pension system, capital market development, financial inclusion, taxation, government procurement and state modernization, among others. During

CHAD May 1: Labor Day May 25: Africa Day CHILE May 1: Labor Day May 21: Battle of Iquique

CROATIA May 1: Labor Day CUBA May 1: International Workers’ Day CYPRUS May 1: Labor Day

CHINA May 1: Labor Day

CZECH REPUBLIC May 1: Labor Day May 8: Liberation Day

COLOMBIA May 1: Labor Day

DENMARK May 1: Workers’ Day

the past three years, Peru’s credit ratings were upgraded by all major credit rating agencies. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Castilla held several positions at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, including deputy finance minister (2010-11) and chief of staff (2009). In addition, he has over 15 years of experience at multilateral development banks, including the World Bank Group in Washington, D.C., and the CAF-Development Bank of Latin America in Caracas, where he was chief economist and vice president of public policies and competitiveness (2006-09), acting vice president of development strategies (2005), director of economic research (200305) and country economist for Bolivia, Peru and Argentina (1996-2002). He has served as the editor of various publications and book chapters and has taught at Johns Hopkins University and the Universidad del Pacífico in Peru. Ambassador Castilla holds a bachelor’s with honors in economics from McGill University, as well as a master’s and a Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University. He speaks Spanish, English and intermediate French, and is a widow with two daughters.

Serbia Djerdj Matkovic became ambassador of Serbia to the United States on Feb. 23, 2015.

Ambassador Ambassador Matkovic, who Djerdj Matkovic entered the Foreign Service in 1981, previously served as deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Yugoslavia in Hungary, first counselor at the Embassy of Serbia in Washington, D.C., chief of protocol and director of the Department for North and South America at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia and, most recently, as foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic. Born in Subotica in northern Serbia, Ambassador Matkovic to Belgrade in 1971, graduating from the Law Faculty

May 7: Store Bededag May 14: Ascension May 24: Whit Sunday May 25: Whit Monday DJIBOUTI May 1: Labor Day DOMINICA May 1: May Day May 24: Whit Sunday May 25: Whit Monday DOMINICAN REPUBLIC May 1: Labor Day EAST TIMOR May 1: Labor Day May 20: Independence Day ECUADOR May 1: Labor Day May 24: Anniversary of the Battle of Pichincha EL SALVADOR May 1: Labor Day EQUATORIAL GUINEA May 1: May Day May 25: Africa Day

of the University of Belgrade with a degree in international relations.

Vietnam Pham Quang Vinh became ambassador of Vietnam to the United States on Feb. 23, 2015.

He has also been accredited the title of senior ambassa- Ambassador Pham Quang Vinh dor, the highest rank for a Vietnamese career diplomat. From 2011 to 2014, Ambassador Vinh served as deputy minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in charge of relations with countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, and as Vietnam’s senior official to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN SOM leader). From 2008 to 2011, he held the position of assistant minister of foreign affairs and Vietnam’s ASEAN SOM leader (200811), as well as deputy director general, then director general and Vietnam’s ASEAN SOM leader (2007-08). Much of the earlier years of Ambassador Vinh’s public service career was attached to the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Department of International Organizations, where he started off as a desk officer in 1980 before being promoted to assistant director general in 1994, and then deputy director general in 1995, the position that he held until the end of 2003.

Ambassador Vinh was also posted twice to Vietnam’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, first as an attaché from 1987 to 1990 and then as a minister counselor and deputy permanent representative from 1996 to 1999. His third posting was to the Embassy of Vietnam in Thailand as a minister counselor from 2003 to 2007. Ambassador Vinh graduated from the University of Foreign Affairs in Hanoi and earned a master’s degree in international relations from Canberra College of Advanced Education in Australia. He is married to Hoang Bich Lien and has two children.

The Washington Diplomat

May 2015

ERITREA May 24: Liberation Day ESTONIA May 1: Spring Day May 24: Pentecost ETHIOPIA May 28: National Day EUROPEAN UNION May 9: Soloman Day FINLAND May 1: May Day FRANCE May 1: Labor Day May 8: Victory Day of 1945 May 14: Ascension May 25: Pentecost May 25: Pentecost Monday GABON May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Pentecost Monday May 26: Mother’s Day GAMBIA May 1: Labor Day GEORGIA May 26: Independence Day GERMANY May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Whit Monday GHANA May 1: May Day GREECE May 1: Labor Day GRENADA May 25: Whit Monday GUATEMALA May 1: Labor Day GUYANA May 1: Labor Day May 5: Indian Heritage Day May 26: Independence Day HONDURAS May 1: Labor Day HUNGARY May 1: Labor Day May 25: Whit Monday ICELAND May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 24: Whit Sunday May 25: Whit Monday INDONESIA May 14: Ascension IRELAND May 4: May Day ISRAEL May 3: Second Passover May 7: Lag B’Omer May 23-25: Shavuot ITALY May 1: May Day JAMAICA May 24: Labor Day JAPAN May 3: Constitution

Memorial Day May 4: National Holiday May 5: Children’s Day JORDAN May 25: Independence Day KAZAKHSTAN May 1: Day of Unity of Peoples of Kazakhstan May 9: Victory Day KENYA May 1: Labor Day KYRGYZSTAN May 5: Constitution Day May 9: WWII Victory Day LAOS May 1: Labor Day LATVIA May 1: Labor Day May 4: Declaration of Independence LEBANON May 1: Labor Day May 6: Martyrs’ Day May 25: Liberation of the South LESOTHO May 1: Workers’ Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Africa Day/ Heroes’ Day LIECHTENSTEIN May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Pentecost Monday LITHUANIA May 1: Labor Day LUXEMBOURG May 1: May Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Whit Monday MACEDONIA May 1-2: Labor Day MADAGASCAR May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Africa Day May 25: Pentecost Monday MALAWI May 1: Labor Day MALAYSIA May 1: Labor Day MALI May 25: Africa Day MALTA May 1: Labor Day MARSHALL ISLANDS May 1: Constitution Day MAURITANIA May 1: Labor Day May 25: Africa Day MAURITIUS May 1: Labor Day MEXICO May 1: Labor Day May 5: Cinco de Mayo

May 2015

from page 9

Nicaragua payment Nicaragua receives will be no more than $100 million for the whole life of the con­ cession. I don’t see any sense in portraying this project as solving any economic problems when we’re getting nothing out of it.”

Francisco Obadiah Campbell Hooker, Nicara­ gua’s ambassador to the United States, confirmed that the Inter-American Dialogue invited him to the panel but that he turned the group down, telling The Washington Diplomat it was “not inter­ esting” to him — even though he’s attended numerous other Dialogue presentations in the past.

Beyond that, Campbell refused to comment on any aspect of the canal. In contrast, a growing number of Nicaraguans are speaking out against the project — and against a president they have long supported.

Ortega, a former Sandinista guerilla leader who lost power in 1990 but regained the presidency in 2006, remains a popular figure. He’s largely dispelled fears that his leftist, anti-capitalist rheto­ ric would drive away foreign investment. In fact, under his rule, the economy has steadily grown and tourism has increased, while crime and drug trafficking have plummeted.

At the same time, Ortega, now in his third term, has been criticized for cracking down on dissent and changing the constitution in a blatant power grab. Yet he retains a strong base of support among working-class and poor Nicaraguans, even while he continues to court big business.

Polls indicate that a majority of Nicaraguans back the canal and the economic boon it prom­ ises (70 percent of the population lives on less than $4 a day). Indeed, parts of the canal route are sparsely populated or struggling with poverty, and could use an injection of cash and develop­ ment.

But Ortega’s vision for a grand waterway is causing a rift with his traditional supporters, including the rural campesinos who could be displaced by the project. Dozens of protests have broken out among farmers who warn that the megaproject — whose no-bid concession was rushed through with no public debate — might not only upend indigenous communities, but could also wreak unintended environmental damage.

Alvarez of Rice University said Nicaragua’s proposed canal would be twice as deep and four times as long as the Panama Canal, requiring the dredging of some 1.2 billion tons of sediment.

That could seriously threaten the health of Lake Nicaragua — the largest tropical freshwater lake in the Americas and an important source of drink­ ing water — through which 60 miles of the canal would pass.

“These sediments contain a lot of nutrients and organic matter, creating a dead zone devoid of dissolved oxygen where no aquatic life can persist,” the engineering professor warned. “And the dredging would have to be recurrent, because of the traffic of 5,000 ships passing every year.

MICRONESIA May 10: Constitution Day MOLDOVA May 1: Labor Day May 9: Victory Day MONTENEGRO May 21: Independence Day MOZAMBIQUE May 1: Workers’ Day NAMIBIA May 1: Workers’ Day May 4: Cassinga Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Africa Day

NETHERLANDS May 5: Liberation Day May 14: Ascension May 25: Whit Monday NICARAGUA May 1: Labor Day

Increased turbidity represents a threat to the unique freshwater sharks that need to see in order to hunt, not to mention invasive species brought by transoceanic ships.”

The explosion of zebra mussels in the U.S. Great Lakes has cost $250 million to clean up, Alvarez noted. But that’s nothing compared to the worst-case scenario — an oil spill that could dev­ astate Lake Nicaragua since there would be no room for dispersion.

“A benefit-cost analysis is urgently needed that monetizes this loss of ecosystems and water secu­ rity, which has implications for food security,” Alvarez warned. “It is incumbent upon scientists, NGOs and human rights activists to halt construc­ tion until such a comprehensive independent analysis demonstrates the sustainability of this megaproject. The burden of proof lies on the proponents.”

Whether the canal is actually built is another story. For nearly two centuries, the dream of a transoceanic canal across Nicaragua has been just that — a dream.

“They are promising you a delicious cake, and you cannot bake a delicious cake if you use rotten eggs,”Alvarez said.“The cost of this canal is at least five times Nicaragua’s GDP. So if it’s really about sustainability, there are better ways to accomplish this.”

The feasibility of the project — or lack thereof — may have been why U.S. officials decided not to bring it up with Ortega during the April 10-11 Summit of the Americas in Panama City, which was attended by the leaders of all 35 nations in the Western Hemisphere.

“We don’t necessarily plan to have a direct conversation with representatives of the Nicaraguan government,” said Roberta Jacobson, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, in response to a question from this reporter about the canal.

“But we’ve certainly been very clear,” said Jacobson, speaking April 3 at the Brookings Institution.“Our position on the canal has always been that it be done in a way that is transparent and responsive to the concerns of Nicaraguan citizens — [not only] environmental and land issues, but those that may come up along the way.

The problems we’ve seen have been a lack of transparency both in bidding and procedural issues, and whether all of these concerns are being taken into account.”

While the U.S. response has been somewhat muted, Nicaragua’s neighbor to the south has been far more vocal about the canal.

“I’m skeptical about the project,” said Manuel González Sanz, Costa Rica’s foreign minister, dur­ ing a recent visit to Washington. “I have my doubts about how real and how serious it is.

“We have a right to request environmental studies, which we have done twice already last year, but no response,” González told us. “So I understand the justification of the Nicaraguan people to be concerned, not just for Costa Rica, but the whole area.”

Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

May 24: Whit Sunday May 25: Whit Monday

POLAND May 1: Labor Day May 3: Constitution Day

PALAU May 5: Senior Citizen’s Day

PORTUGAL May 1: Labor Day

NIGER May 1: Labor Day

PANAMA May 1: Labor Day

NIGERIA May 1: Worker’s Day May 27: Children’s Day

PARAGUAY May 1: Labor Day May 15: Independence Day

NORWAY May 1: May Day May 14: Ascension May 17: National Day

PERU May 1: Labor Day PHILIPPINES May 1: Labor Day

ROMANIA May 1: Labor Day RUSSIA May 1-2: Spring and Labor Day May 9: Victory Day

ST. LUCIA May 1: Labor Day ST. VINCENT and THE GRENADINES May 1: Labor Day May 25: Whit Monday

RWANDA May 1: Labor Day

SENEGAL May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 24: Whit Sunday May 25: Whit Monday

ST. KITTS and NEVIS May 1: May Day May 25: Whit Monday

SERBIA May 1-2: Labor Day May 9: Victory Day

The panoramic Hong Kong skyline is seen from a path around Victoria Peak.

Photo: David Iliff / Wikimedia Commons License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

from page 12

Hong Kong In addition, Hong Kong’s reputation as a world financial hub is undisputed.As in past years, the territory came in first worldwide among 178 countries surveyed in this year’s Economic Freedom Index.And in the World Bank’s 2015 Doing Business survey, Hong Kong placed third among 189 jurisdictions, behind only Singapore and New Zealand.

“We have a strong legal and constitu­ tional framework and a fiercely indepen­ dent judiciary. Anything the government does is subject to judicial oversight. If peo­ ple bring a lawsuit or writ of habeas corpus, our court protects civil liberties,” Leung said, adding that, “Hong Kong is a very interna­ tional city with a strong American business presence. We also have lots of former Hong Kong residents who have immigrated to the U.S. They’d like to know what’s going on, and part of my job is to answer their ques­ tions.”

One of Leung’s priorities at the moment is to lobby lawmakers to grant holders of Hong Kong SAR passports visa-free travel to the United States. At present, such people can obtain 10-year visas, though the applica­ tion process costs $200 and fewer than two out of every 100 applicants are rejected.

“This is part of my main mission,” he said.

“Because Hong Kong is not a country, Congress would have to pass a law for us to get admitted to the visa-waiver program.

During the last Congress, a bill passed the Senate and got integrated into the compre­ hensive immigration bill. That didn’t go anywhere.”

Leung said he saw 70 to 80 lawmakers on the Hill, trying to garner support. In that regard, he got help from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), along with Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.).

“When I talk to these senators and con­ gressmen, they immediately understand that it makes sense for the U.S. to encourage more investment and tourism from Hong Kong,” he explained. “We don’t pose any security or immigration risks. Hong Kong’s unemployment rate is only 3.3 percent.

Everybody has a job. They won’t overstay their visas, washing cars or picking apples.

But I know that anything having to do with immigration could be very sensitive.”

About 5 million people hold HKSAR

SEYCHELLES May 1: Labor Day SINGAPORE May 1: Labor Day SLOVAKIA May 1: Labor Day May 8: Triumph Over Fascism Day SLOVENIA May 1-2: Labor Day SOUTH AFRICA May 1: Workers’ Day SPAIN May 1: Labor Day

SRI LANKA May 1: May Day SWEDEN May 1: May Day May 14: Ascension May 24: Whit Sunday SWITZERLAND May 1: May Day May 14: Ascension May 24: Whit Sunday May 25: Whit Monday

Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

TANZANIA May 1: Workers’ Day

TURKEY May 19: Youth and Sports Day

UZBEKISTAN May 1: Labor Day May 9: Victory Day

THAILAND May 5: Coronation Day

TURKMENISTAN May 9: Victory Day May 18: Constitution Day

VENEZUELA May 1: Labor Day

TOGO May 1: Labor Day May 14: Ascension May 24: Pentecost May 25: Pentecost Monday

UKRAINE May 1-2: Labor Day May 9: Victory Day

SYRIA May 1: Labor Day

TRINIDAD and TOBAGO May 30: Indian Arrival Day

TAJIKISTAN May 1: Labor Day

TUNISIA May 1: Labor Day

May 2015

passports, which are available only to Chinese people born in Hong Kong. Some 150 countries currently provide visa-free access to holders of these passports. Leung, citing a recent study by the libertarian CATO Institute, said that if the United States were to do likewise, the number of Hong Kong tourists visiting this country would jump by 30 percent in the first year of visafree travel.

Leung is also closely watching the highly controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping trade pact that encom­ passes a dozen Pacific Rim economies — but not China or Hong Kong.

TPP is strongly supported by the Obama administration and big business, and is likely to be approved by the Republicancontrolled Congress, which recently sig­ naled that it is willing to give the president “fast-track”trade promotion authority allow­ ing him to put the deal for an up-or-down vote on the Hill, without any amendments.

If ratified, the TPP would go down as the largest trade agreement in American history — and a key economic buffer against Chinese hegemony in the region.

“I think it will have a great impact on the kind of trade pattern we may see arising from the agreement.We’ve detected a lot of energy in this country to get it passed,” said Leung. “But in Hong Kong, being a very open trade regime, we always say we could become a victim of our own success.”

Leung said he’s more interested in build­ ing closer ties with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with which Hong Kong is negoti­ ating its own free trade agreement.

As important as they are, all these trade pacts pale in significance compared to the uncertain future Hong Kong faces as a lonely outpost of democracy and free-mar­ ket enterprise surrounded by a sea of com­ munism and repression.

If the status quo prevails, Leung won’t be able to vote for chief executive in 2017, because he doesn’t belong to Hong Kong’s 1,200-member electoral college. But if by some miracle the law changes, he said, “I would be prepared to spend my own money to fly back just to cast my vote, in the event the government doesn’t sponsor my flight.”

VIETNAM May 1: Labor Day YEMEN May 1: Labor Day May 22: National Day

UNITED KINGDOM May 4: May Day May 25: Spring Bank Holiday

ZAMBIA May 1: Labor Day May 25: Africa Day

URUGUAY May 1: Labor Day May 18: Battle of Las Piedras

ZIMBABWE May 1: Workers’ Day May 25: Africa Day

The Washington Diplomat Page 45

from page 8

Russia Americans are so angry about secession. If this is such an unbreakable rule, you should be a part of the British Empire.”

Stepanov, who joined Russia’s Foreign Service in 1994 and began his current job in January 2010, also sees a double standard applied to the 2014 overthrow of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, which he called a coup d’état — despite State Department pronouncements to the contrary.

“The U.S. and European Union always said it’s unacceptable to overthrow a democrati­ cally elected government. In 2010, when Yanukovych was elected president, [U.S. Vice President] Joe Biden called and congratulated him. The EU recognized him too,” he pointed out. “But in 2014, when this president was overthrown by force, we didn’t hear any con­ demnation from the United States or Europe.

More than that, both Washington and Brussels supported those people who overthrew him.

This is an exercise in double standards.”

Likewise, Stepanov said the West’s coverage of last year’s protests glossed over some of the more unsavory elements within the pro­de­ mocracy movement. Ukrainians who didn’t support the Maidan Square revolution were beaten, Stepanov alleged; some police officers were killed and government property was destroyed. Anyone who disagreed with the protesters was called a fascist and neo­Nazi.

“Some were even burned alive,” he charged, “and we all remember the last time in Europe people were burned alive.”

Stepanov didn’t provide any evidence to substantiate those claims. He also conveniently failed to mention the many abuses that rebels have been accused of perpetrating since uni­ laterally seizing territory in Ukraine’s industrial heartland.

Russia has been a lifeline to those rebels, providing weapons, military assistance and “volunteers”to help them overpower Ukraine’s weak army, which has been starved of men and matériel since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

While some EU member states like Germany worry that providing Ukrainian forces with advanced weaponry will trigger Russian retali­ ation, those fears ring hollow to countries that lived under Soviet occupation for decades.

Given this history — and the recent upsurge in Russian military incursions into EU airspace — it’s little surprise that countries such as Poland are clamoring for a stepped­up NATO presence to deter future Russian meddling.

In fact, the same day as Stepanov’s talk at SAIS, the secretary­general of NATO, Gen. Jens Stoltenberg, spoke at the nearby Willard InterContinental hotel to warn member states not to slash military expenditures in the face of Kremlin aggression.

“While we have been cutting our defense budgets, others have invested heavily,” Stoltenberg said in a March 25 address at the NATO Allied Command Transformation semi­ nar. “Russia is investing in new tanks, new air­ craft, new ships, new submarines and long­ range cruise missiles. China is testing its first carrier battle group and building a second.And it has just announced a further 10 percent increase in its defense budget.”

Of the 14 NATO countries that have so far announced their military budgets for 2015, only the United States and Estonia have sur­ passed the 2 percent of national GDP that all 28 members of the alliance pledged to spend on defense at the last NATO summit in Wales in 2014. Poland has promised to meet that goal by 2016 — when NATO will hold its next sum­ mit in Warsaw — and Lithuania bumped up its budget to nearly 1.5 percent of its GDP. Despite the increases,NATO is still an American enterprise: U.S. taxpayers currently fund 75 percent of the bloc’s expenditures. And like

46

The Washington Diplomat

PHOTO: NATO

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

Above, Oleg Stepanov, deputy chief of mission at the Russian Embassy, makes a point during a March 25 conversation with Thomas Blau, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. At right, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attends a press conference during last September’s NATO Wales Summit.

Russia, the United States is set to increase its defense spending in the coming fiscal year.

While Washington and Moscow accuse each other of boosting defense spending at the other’s expense, there was a time, not that long ago, when NATO and Russia weren’t mor­ tal enemies.

Before the Western security bloc under­ went a major enlargement in 2004 that added seven former communist states to its ranks, Minchenko noted that Putin, back in March 2000, shocked fans and critics alike when he told the BBC’s David Frost that “we believe we can talk about more profound integration with NATO, but only if Russia is regarded as an equal partner.”

Putin also warned that any attempt by the Brussels­based alliance to exclude the Russians from the debate over NATO’s eastward expan­ sion would only provoke anger. NATO disre­ garded those threats and counters that there were never any political or legally binding commitments forbidding the extension of NATO beyond the borders of a reunified Germany, as Putin often claims.

“Russia was not happy with the West, and the U.S. especially did not view Russia as an equal partner,” Minchenko told The Diplomat following his April 1 lecture at Washington’s Center on Global Interests. “From a Russian point of view, this behavior seemed arrogant.

When Putin helped [President George W.] Bush with Afghanistan, what did he receive in return? NATO’s expansion to the Baltic coun­ tries.”

Minchenko said trust was further eroded during the Clinton administration.

“NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 had a very serious impact on Russian public opin­ ion,” he said. So did the 2011 NATO attack on Libya, where a humanitarian mission quickly morphed into an air­bombing campaign to overthrow the Qaddafi regime, Minchenko said. “Russia did not use its veto in the U.N. Security Council to stop the invasion. But a lot of people in Russia think that was a mistake. In fact, for the Russian public, NATO is aggressive and dangerous.”

Those two adjectives are also often used to describe Putin himself. He’s inspired a cottage industry of experts speculating on what drives the enigmatic Russian leader’s behavior (nar­ cissism, greed, thuggishness, even autism have all been mentioned).

But a few lone voices say Putin is a rational actor “motivated by the same geopolitical con­ siderations that influence all great powers, including the United States,” as the University of Chicago’s John J. Mearsheimer wrote in a

New York Times op­ed last year.

“Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphat­ ically and repeatedly,” Mearsheimer argued in the Foreign Affairs piece “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.”

“Washington may not like Moscow’s posi­ tion, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory,” he added.“After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders.

Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it.”

Minchenko, in his D.C. lecture titled “Politburo 2.0: Can Putin’s Inner Circle Survive the Crisis?,” also insisted that Russia’s president is not nearly as evil as the Beltway consensus paints him out to be.

In fact, Putin is not a Russian ultra­national­ ist, he’s not a dictator and he’s not even anti­ Western — nor can he be influenced by money, said the political consultant, as he list­ ed and then attempted to debunk five com­ mon myths about the Russian leader.

“Actually, Putin is very attentive, sometimes too attentive, to public opinion. Of course he has an influence on opinion, but I would not overestimate the role of so­called propaganda,” said Minchenko, who in 2013 was ranked first in popularity among political analysts rated by Russian journalists.

“Some people think that Russia is the same Soviet Union, but smaller. In reality, we have a market economy and we have a democracy,” said Minchenko, whose lecture sparked more than a few rather nasty comments from audi­ ence members who grumbled about the speaker’s obviously pro­Putin stance.

“Maybe it’s not perfect, but it works,” he continued, undeterred. “And we have an inde­ pendent media. What’s interesting is that peo­ ple who get their information from the Internet and social media are more pro­Putin and anti­American than those who get infor­ mation from official media, which is trying to stay neutral. People on the Internet are more radical.”

Of course, the numerous media outlets that have been harassed or shut down for criticiz­ ing the Kremlin would beg to disagree with Minchenko’s assertions. Outside of Russia, analysts frequently accuse Putin of whipping up nationalistic fervor with the state­spon­

sored media’s one­sided, sensationalist cover­ age of the Ukraine crisis.

Polls show overwhelming domestic sup­ port for Putin’s Ukraine policy — so much so that it may be difficult for the Russian leader to put the lid back on the nationalist fever he helped stoke.

He may have no choice, though. Since the United States and 28­member EU imposed tough economic sanctions against Russia, for­ eign investment has spilled out of Russia, the value of the ruble has plummeted and Moscow’s energy­reliant budget has been squeezed by tumbling oil prices. The down­ turn threatens to undo the otherwise impres­ sive economic gains made under Putin’s rule.

In response, the Russian ruler has been court­ ing EU allies such as Greece and Hungary to break the bloc’s unity on sanctions and end his country’s isolation.

U.S. officials credit sanctions for bringing Moscow, and by extension Ukraine’s rebels, to the bargaining table to forge a tenuous cease­ fire in February. After months of fighting that killed more than 6,000 people and displaced a million more, the truce between Kiev and the separatists appears to be holding, although neither side has made progress on the core issues that divide them, like the political status of the separatist­held regions.

But Stepanov lashed out at the Western sanctions, denying that they have in any way influenced Russia’s calculations.

“Sanctions do not help to advance the peace process in Ukraine. Obviously they will not work with Russia, because you cannot isolate the sixth­ or seventh­largest economy in the world. To have illusions that putting economic pressure on us will make us change course or stop believing in what we believe is a bit absurd,” he said.

“The policy of unilateral sanctions under­ mines the credibility of the United States as a partner in the international arena,” Stepanov continued.“On one hand, the U.S. claims it’s a leading voice for global trade, liberalization and market freedoms — and then on the other hand, you violate the same principles you claim to believe in.”

Moscow was always against violence in Ukraine, he said, insisting that Russian­backed rebels “don’t want to capture Kiev; they’re just defending their areas.”

However, Stepanov predicted that eventu­ ally, the conflict will come to an end.

“Realistically speaking, it doesn’t have a military solution,” he told his audience.“It can be solved only politically, through dialogue, but there has to be political will.”

After Stepanov’s speech at SAIS, the diplo­ mat agreed to take a few questions.

One SAIS student bravely asked Stepanov what he really thinks of Putin. The diplomat thought for a minute, smiled and said, “Personally, I envy him. Next question?”

Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

YOUR SOURCE FOR DIPLOMATIC NEWS. www.washdiplomat.com

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Public Relations work with the same media. We always want to talk to people who cover foreign policy or trade issues or culture issues, so the pool of reporters that we want to try to establish relationships with or gain their attention is very small.”

To make their messages stand out, Bundy said embassies must be topical and pitch the right outlet.Technology is enormously helpful, too. Chances are that even a small embassy with one or two people are posting to Twitter about their work, she said.

It also helps to be clever and seize an opportunity to go viral. The Dutch Embassy did just that when it stepped into the fray over marijuana legalization.After D.C. voted to legal­ ize marijuana and Mayor Muriel Bowser tried to assuage fears by saying the District wouldn’t become “like Amsterdam,” the Dutch Embassy quickly shot back and schooled the city’s new mayor.

It issued a not­too­subtle Q&A, pointing out, among other things, that in the Netherlands it is still illegal to possess pot (unlike under the new D.C. law) but that police treat certain cases as a low­enforcement priority. It also noted that the lifetime rate of marijuana con­ sumption among those ages 15 to 64 in the Netherlands is 25.7 percent, versus 41.5 per­ cent in the United States. The embassy even put out a nifty infographic explaining all the ways that Amsterdam is not like Washington — from pot to street car lines, poking fun of the city’s troubled street car debut. The response was concise, catchy, timely and got picked up by the Washington Post, Vox and other news outlets.

Ultimately, PR is an extension of an embassy’s mission, Bundy told us. “It really is something that enhances the work that the diplomats do here,” she said.“I have a really cool job.”

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Although Martin doesn’t represent embas­ invites journalists, Capitol Hill staffers and oth­ sies, the rules of PR are the same no matter the ers to be part of the Diplomatic Finnish Sauna Society of D.C. organization type, she said.

“Often people don’t know much about “PR is important to everyone because it is literally your outward­facing message,” Martin especially smaller countries or sometimes there might even be misconceptions,” said.

Across the board, good PR agents must be Kangasharju said.“I think it’s very important to good writers, able to work round­the­clock be present, to answer queries and to actively and believe in what they’re pitching. “You inform about your country and to let people know what sort of things are have to be able to care about important. The more we your clients as much as they know about each other, the do,” she said. better our situation will be.”

When it comes to PR, size doesn’t matter.Resourcefulness does. “Have a great message.

3DANNIA HAKKI AND Honestly, that’s the most SHERRY MOELLER important thing,” Martin said. co-founders “Really think about what of MoKi Media you’re saying and who you’re saying it to and make sure it’s This luxury lifestyle­fo­ relevant to that reporter. Be cused boutique PR firm start­ consistent and be available. If ed five years ago with a staff it’s not a priority to you, it’s of two in one office.Today it’s PHOTO: JOY ASICO / MOKI MEDIA not going to be a priority to the reporter. ‘I can’t help you’ Sherry Moeller, left, and Dannia got 10 employees and two isn’t an answer.”

Hakki celebrate the fifth anniver- locations — Dannia Hakki holds shop in Georgetown sary of MoKi Media. while Sherry Moeller works out of Maryland. When Hakki, who worked in SANNA KANGASHARJU PR in New York City, teamed with Moeller, just press counselor at the Embassy of Finland coming off a year as editor in chief of Capitol Transparency is at the heart of everything File magazine, they realized combining their Sanna Kangasharju has done in her two and a experience could be a perfect mix.

A client roster including the Hay­Adams half years at the Finnish Embassy, which has had a communications department for hotel, Boffi Georgetown and United Colors of Benetton would suggest they were right. decades.

“The biggest thing to keep in mind — and “Our whole government works in a very, very transparent way,” said Kangasharju, who one I always strive to do with my clients — is studied communications in Helsinki. “We to make sure their names stay out in the pub­ always answer every query, even if it’s a diffi­ lic and stay in front of the right people,” said cult question. Sometimes there are very rare Moeller, who launched Washington Spaces cases where some information may be classi­ magazine.

For Hakki, PR means serving as an expert fied, but then you just have to tell it openly: ‘OK, I can tell you this much and I’m afraid who knows the media landscape.“If you don’t have a PR person gunning for you and making that the rest is classified.’”

For embassies that don’t have a press staff, sure your news is front and center, you will be she recommends identifying three topics that forgotten,” the Washington native said.

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How embassies publicize their information depends on the message, Moeller said. If they’re trying to promote an event, for exam­ ple, she recommends getting it on event calen­ dars, including it in an embassy e­newsletter and putting it on the website and social media.

Be consistent with the message and keep it updated, she added.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and all of them,” she said.“Maybe find one that they can really populate and make sure it stays cur­ rent.”

GINA ANDERSON public affairs adviser at the New Zealand Embassy

The New Zealand Embassy has had a public affairs department for at least 30 years, but the communications role, which includes its digi­ tal footprint,is a recent addition,Gina Anderson said. Currently, the communications depart­ ment is just her and a seasonal intern.

To keep the embassy, and the country, at the forefront of people’s minds, she makes heavy use of social media platforms.

“Your organization website usually shows up in the Google search, but only think of it as a backup resource. Free social media platforms are your best way to reach a wider audience,” said Anderson, whose love of writing and international and current affairs led her to PR. “Facebook and Twitter, just to name two, are very user­friendly. If you were to survey your organization, you’d probably find several social media practitioners who might be willing to spend 10 [percent] to 15 percent of their day finding and producing content for your social media sites.”

She recommends sending those individuals to training courses on using those tools in their professional capacity.The Public Relations Society of America, PR News and the National Press Club host social media boot camps, for example.

“If you leave your brand and reputation up to a website and a 1­800 number, then you are missing a majority of your audience,”Anderson said.

Stephanie Kanowitz is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

The Washington Diplomat Page 47

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