May 2018

Medical & Education Special Sections INSIDE Education

A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

VOLUME 25, NUMBER 5

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May 2018

MAY 2018

WWW.WASHDIPLOMAT.COM Leaning In Early

Women Ambassadors Advise

T

Middle East

Students on Getting Ahead

he #MeToo movement has raised awareness of how pervasive gender inequality is around the world, while persistent allegations of infidelity and sexual harassment swirling around President Trump have raised red flags among many women voters.

‘In Man’s World’ •

PHOTO: GW WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP

PROGRAM

Around 80 students from The George Washington University’s Women Leadership Program recently featuring four women ambassadors attended a symposium discussing their careers.

BY AUSTIN MISTRETTA

Both have galvanized women to diplomacy or the White speak up about abuse House. and make their As bumpy as the path toward voices heard in the political arena. equality continues to Despite the revival of be for many women’s women, it can be even rights in the national more discourse, daunting for students women still face signifi looking to cant hurdles enter male-dominate in getting ahead in a d careers. man’s world — whether it comes to Hollywood,

SEE WOMEN • PAGE 24

Do-or-Die Time for Iranian Nuclear Deal Under Trump

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT

| MAY 2018 | 23

A year ago, Casper Klynge attracted headlines as the world’s first tech ambassador, serving as Denmark’s liaison to the tech titans of Silicon Valley such as Facebook, Google and Apple. Today, he says his mission is more relevant than ever as big tech faces a growing “techlash” amid controversies ranging from foreign meddling, fake news and privacy breaches to accusations that the social media platforms meant to unite us are actually destroying our ability to connect as human beings.

President Trump must decide by May 12 whether to stay in the Iran nuclear agreement or scrap it, and his choice of John Bolton as national security adviser and Mike Pompeo as secretary of state increase the likelihood that he will abandon the landmark accord. But what happens next? / PAGE 8

PAGE 17

United States

Bolton Set to Shake Up President Trump’s Foreign Policy Team John Bolton’s resume is as long as it is polarizing. As the fiery former ambassador to the U.N. takes the reins of the National Security Agency, observers wonder whether Bolton will reinforce President Trump’s hawkish impulses on Iran and North Korea, or if the savvy bureaucratic operator will succeed where H.R. McMaster failed. / PAGE 12

DENMARK’S

TECH

AMBASSADOR

Culture

Exhibit Sets D.C. on Fire “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man” is blazing an experimental art trail from the Nevada desert to D.C. PAGE 36

People of World Influence

Diplomatic Spouses

‘Undiplomatic Diplomat’ Speaks His Mind

Beyond the Palm Trees

The prosperous city-state of Singapore isn’t like most other nations, and Bilahari Kausikan isn’t like most other diplomats. A former permanent secretary of foreign affairs, Kausikan talks candidly about President Trump, China, trade and “Western delusions” about democracy. / PAGE 4

“The big misconception is that we are only desert, palm trees and camels,” says Shaikha Aisha AlKhalifa, wife of Bahrain’s ambassador, about her tiny island that has made big advances as a thriving economy with close ties to the U.S. / PAGE 38

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ON THE COVER Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Contents

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

12 20 31

17 28 NEWS

40 21

GLOBAL VANTAGE POINT

38

DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES

The U.S. must capitalize on its diversity — and that includes Puerto Rico.

Whether on Trump, trade or Western “asses,” Singapore’s Bilahari Kausikan tells it like it is.

A Bahraini wife and mother of five touts her tiny island’s transformation.

EDUCATION

39

8 IRAN – THE DAY AFTER

23

Cirque du Soleil’s “LUZIA” creates a surreal Mexican dreamscape.

4

PEOPLE OF WORLD INFLUENCE

LEANING IN YOUNG

It’s do-or-die time for the Iranian nuclear accord, which Trump called the “worst” deal ever.

Women ambassadors talk to students about shattering the proverbial glass ceiling.

12

28

MORE THAN A GAME

BOLTON OF LIGHTENING Shrewd but controversial, John Bolton takes the reins of the National Security Agency.

The South Korean Olympics revived the debate over the role sports plays in diplomacy.

14

MEDICAL

IRAQ’S UNSTABLE PEACE Parliamentary elections will test the war-torn nation’s fragile democracy.

17

COVER PROFILE: TECH Denmark’s first-ever ambassador to Silicon Valley tackles the promise and pitfalls of big tech.

20

THE REVOLUTION MARCHES ON

Tunisia’s experiment with democracy enters a new phase with local elections.

31

LUNG CANCER

New immunotherapy drugs may be a major breakthrough in fighting lung cancer.

CULTURE 36

BLAZING PIONEER

The Renwick Gallery celebrates the counterculture revolution of Burning Man.

40

FLYING HIGH

EAST-WEST FUSION

Korean-born, Atlanta-based artist Jiha Moon mixes the foreign with the familiar.

41

NOT IN KANSAS ANY MORE

“The Wiz” offers an African American twist on the magical, ageless children’s tale.

REGULARS 42 CINEMA LISTING 44 EVENTS LISTING 46 DIPLOMATIC SPOTLIGHT 54 CLASSIFIEDS 55 REAL ESTATE CLASSIFIEDS THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 3

WD | People of World Influence

‘Undiplomatic Diplomat’ Whether on Trump, China or ‘Western Delusions,’ Singapore’s Bilahari Kausikan Tells It Like It Is

BY LARRY LUXNER

S

INGAPORE — The prosperous city-state of Singapore isn’t like most other nations, and Bilahari Kausikan isn’t like most other diplomats.

With 5.7 million people crammed into an area only four times the size of the District of Columbia, Singapore — which built its wealth on global trade, shipping, finance and openness to investment by foreign multinationals — is the second-most densely populated nation on Earth, surpassed only by the European microstate of Monaco.

Yet when it comes to quality of life, squeaky clean Singapore consistently ranks at the top of many global lists.

Sprawling Changi Airport is consistently voted the world’s best airport, Singapore Airlines among the world’s best airlines, and Singapore itself among the world’s easiest places to do business. It regularly outperforms other countries in areas such as life expectancy, education, health care, safety and per-capita income. Architecturally speaking, its skyline is the most dramatic in Asia.

On the other hand, Singapore has a reputation for being a nanny state where free speech is suppressed, political opposition is restricted and people who commit petty offenses like peddling pirated DVDs, chewing gum, scrawling graffiti in public places or even jaywalking are punished with jail time. Drug trafficking carries a mandatory death sentence.

This year, Singapore occupies the rotating chairmanship of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Bilahari Kausikan is Singapore’s former permanent secretary of foreign affairs; the gregarious, bespectacled diplomat became ambassador-at-large in 2013, after retiring from Singapore’s Administrative Service.

But diplomacy is nothing new in Bilahari’s family. His father was the country’s first ambassador to what was then the Soviet Union, and Bilahari himself is a former envoy to Russia and Singapore’s ex-permanent representative to the United Nations.

The Straits Times, Singapore’s bestknown newspaper, recently called Bilahari “the undiplomatic diplomat” who tells it like it is, regardless of the consequences.

Last July, when a reporter for that newspaper asked Bilahari about his reputation for chewing people up and spitting them out, he laughed. “Only on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday,” he said. “On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I merely suck their blood.”

Bilahari, 63, is currently chairman of the Middle East Institute, an autonomous entity within the National University of Singapore. He’s also written a book called “Singapore Is Not An Island.” The Wash-

4 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

PHOTO: LARRY LUXNER

“

There is a misunderstanding of diplomacy. It is not about making yourself agreeable to everybody; it’s about pursuing your country’s interests.

BILAHARI KAUSIKAN ambassador-at-large for Singapore

ington Diplomat caught up with Bilahari at the Grand Hyatt Singapore, just as he was preparing for a visit to Israel. Here are excerpts from our one-hour meeting: THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT: How do you view your role as a diplomat?

BILAHARI KAUSIKAN: There is a misunderstanding of diplomacy. It is not about making yourself agreeable to everybody; it’s about pursuing your country’s interests.

TWD: How would you categorize Singapore’s relationship with the United States?

BK: Both from a strategic and an economic sense, it is one of our two most important relationships, and probably still ahead of China. From the security deterrence point of view, there is no substitute for the United States. China is going to be an important economic partner, but the U.S. is never going to be an insignificant trading partner, and the U.S. is the offshore balancer in this region, for which there is no substitute.

I keep telling people, don’t judge the United States by what happens in Washington, D.C., because the most important

”

things happen in research labs, universities, corporations and in the 50 states. If you only judge the U.S. by what happens in Washington and what you read in The New York Times, you will conclude, with justification, that the U.S. is in a state of terminal decline. But I lived there for a long time, and of all the major advanced countries, you have a young population that is constantly renewed, because you still attract immigrants.

TWD: What do you think, in general, of the Trump administration’s foreign policy?

BK: If you look calmly at not what Mr. Trump says or tweets, but what his administration has done in the security and foreign policy area, it’s actually not bad. In some ways it’s an improvement over the second term of the Obama administration.

When Obama drew a red line in Syria over chemical weapons and did not enforce it, this really damaged American credibility. So when Trump launched missiles at Syria while having dinner with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping, it did a lot to undo the damage that Obama caused and restore the credibility of

American power, which has repercussions for all kinds of things.

TWD: Do you see a U.S. trade war coming with China?

BK: We should not underestimate Mr. Trump. What he said he would do, he’s doing. Some of the things he said during the campaign are just campaign rhetoric, but this one is very important to his base — even though his base is wrong. If they lost their jobs, it wasn’t because of China, but because of technological change.

Some of those jobs are not coming back.

It’s a hard fact.

TWD: But how will this affect Singapore, whose economy is totally dependent on trade?

BK: The whole world can be screwed, to put it bluntly. I think the risk is very, very high, because China has to respond. But I think the Chinese will try to be reasonable. Some of the things [Trump has] accused China of are not wrong — for example the theft of intellectual property. If he had gone about it in a more calibrated way, I think he would have gotten international support to put China on a level playing field. But we are not the main target. Mr. Trump knows that the U.S. has a trade surplus with Singapore.

TWD: Six nations have competing territorial claims in the South China Sea. How might this issue be resolved?

BK: Singapore has no claims in the South China Sea, but no claims doesn’t mean no interest. Our interest is to have comSEE KAU S IKAN • PAGE 6

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Kausikan CONTINUED • PAGE 4

peting claims solved peacefully rather than by force of arms. But I don’t think you can resolve any of these claims. It’s impossible; it’s just too complicated. I’ve learned one thing in my career: There are some problems that have no solutions.

A skyline of Singapore’s central business district is seen from Chinatown.

TWD: This year, Singapore occupies the rotating presidency of ASEAN. What exactly is ASEAN’s role in the region, and has it been a success since its establishment in 1967?

BK: When we formed ASEAN in 1967, we were five countries. Now there are 10. But in 1967, Indonesia had just stopped fighting an undeclared war against Malaysia, and we had just been expelled from Malaysia. Indonesia was in chaos. The Philippines claimed a huge chunk of Malaysia, and all these countries faced externally supported communist insurgencies. So ASEAN was formed to manage relations between countries that were

PHOTOS: LARRY LUXNER

Tourists and locals stroll through a busy shopping district in Singapore’s Chinatown.

not intrinsically friendly to each other. That is still its essential purpose: keeping the peace in Southeast Asia. And there’s been no war in Southeast Asia for 51 years. It’s a very diverse region. Where we can agree, we agree.

Where we cannot agree, we set this issue aside. It’s not like the EU. We have no delusions about having a common foreign policy. It’s not possible.

As chairman, we’re trying to start various initiatives using digital technology to enable better integration, such as smart cities and harmonization of rules. One cannot finish these initiatives in one year, but they’ll carry on.

But the chairman’s role is a limited one, because ASEAN works by consensus, so you can’t do more than what the members are willing to do.

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TWD: Do you consider Singapore to be a police state?

BK: This is a stupid impression by liberal Westerners talking through their ass. It is one of those persistent Western delusions that there’s only one form of democracy.

Western liberal democracy is, historically, one variant of democracy. When was there a full franchise in the United States? Until quite recently, democracy was a white, male, landowning affair. It brought in women and colored people quite late. That said, there’s considerably more room now [in Singapore] than in the late 1970s.

Singapore’s prosperity is built upon its openness to multinational corporations such as these names displayed in the city-state’s downtown business district.

TWD: As someone who’s been to North Korea six times during your diplomatic career, what do you see coming from the proposed meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un?

BK: Mr. Trump, from the beginning, went from a failed policy of denuclearization to a policy of dealing with North Korea by deterrence.

I don’t think North Korea can be stopped from acquiring the capabilities it already substantially has. For the North Koreans, it’s an existential issue. When Mr. Trump threatens fire and fury on North Korea, it’s not the way American presidents normally talk, but that is the essential logic of deterrence.

Trump is much better than his predecessor, who did nothing for eight years and called it a policy of strategic patience.

TWD: How does Singapore balance its relations with Israel and the Arab world?

BK: On that front, Israel and Singapore understand each other quite well. In things that do not hurt Israel, we’ll vote with the Palestinians, because we have a Muslim

PHOTO: PIXABAY / ALLAN LAU

Singapore’s iconic 2,561-room Marina Bay Sands resort, which opened in 2010 as the world’s most expensive casino property, overlooks the Marina Bay.

population and Muslim neighbors. But we will vote against anything that threatens Israel’s right to exist or equates Zionism with racism or suggests that Israel has committed war crimes.

TWD: How serious is the threat of a terrorist attack in Singapore?

BK: There will be a terrorist attack in Singapore sooner or later. Fundamentally, Islam came to Southeast Asia by traders, not by the sword.

But there’s a phenomenon which we have noticed over the last 30 years: the Arabization of Southeast Asian Islam, which means much more exclusive versions of Islam. It’s not that one day everybody became more pious. But 30 years ago, it was very rare to see a Muslim woman covering her head. That is an Arab

practice, not a Malay practice.

But now it’s common, even in Singapore.

We don’t allow any Muslim organization in Singapore to take foreign money, because we don’t want foreign influence. For example, there is one central authority that writes the Friday sermon for all Muslims. We also ban some Christian preachers from coming here, too.

Radicalization happens anyway, but why exacerbate the problem? WD The Washington Diplomat news editor Larry Luxner spent four days in Singapore in late March.

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WD | Middle East

In or Out? Iran Nuclear Deal Reaches Pivotal Moment as Trump May Finally Ditch the Pact

BY JOHN BRINKLEY

P

resident Trump must decide by May 12 whether to stay in the Iran nuclear agreement or withdraw from it, and his choice of John Bolton as national security adviser and Mike Pompeo as secretary of state increase the likelihood that he will abandon the landmark accord.

Then the question becomes: What happens next?

Will Iran automatically restart its nuclear program, potentially leading to a regional arms race? Will the European Union work with Iran to salvage the deal in defiance of Washington? Or can the bloc come up with a successor agreement that will satisfy the White House? Will Trump be slow to reinstate sanctions on Tehran, giving diplomacy more time? Will Trump’s move to renege on America’s commitments on Iran endanger his credibility ahead of nuclear talks with North Korea? Or will Trump simply surprise everyone again and stick to the deal for now?

TRUMP’S COMPLAINTS The nuclear agreement requires the U.S. president to recertify Iran’s compliance every 120 days and to continue waiving certain economic sanctions against Iran. Trump has accused Iran of violating the “spirit” of the agreement, but Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency and arms control experts say Iran has lived up to its commitments.

Bolton and Pompeo have expressed disdain for the agreement and said the United States should scrap it.

Bolton has said the United States should bomb Iran to eradicate its nuclear program. Pompeo has said Iran was a “thuggish police state” whose leaders were “intent on destroying America.” Trump himself famously called the deal the “worst ever.”

Officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal was negotiated by the Obama administration along with Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China (the P5+1).

It took effect in 2015 and relieved some economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for it agreeing to suspend its nuclear weapons program activities.

Specifically, Iran agreed to allow international inspections of its nuclear sites, relinquish 98 percent of its uranium stockpile and mothball most of its centrifuges. Terms of the deal begin to expire within 10 and 15 years of its signing; after that, Iran must abide by restrictions under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In return, Iran resumed selling its oil on the global market, had tens of billions of dollars in assets unfrozen and began inking business deals with international companies.

Before the appointments of Bolton and Pompeo, State Department and National Security Council officials were working to keep the agreement alive, in part by negotiating with European allies on side agreements with the parts of it that Trump singled out, said Matthew Kroenig, an arms control expert at the Atlantic Council.

There are three aspects of the agreement that Trump has complained about: • It doesn’t prohibit Iran from building intercontinental ballistic missiles.

• It limits inspectors’ access to Iran’s nuclear facilities and does not cover military sites.

• It includes “sunset clauses,” by which some of Iran’s obligations under the agreement expire over time.

8 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

CREDIT: UN PHOTO / EVAN SCHNEIDER

Gholamali Khoshroo, Iran’s permanent representative to the U.N., is seen during the Security Council debate on the situation in his country in January 2018. Iran has threatened to restart its nuclear program if President Trump pulls out of the Iran nuclear accord on May 12.

“

[T]here are a lot of decisions the administration would have to make in terms of what specifically they mean by killing the deal. As far as I know, they haven’t really gone through that planning process at this point.

JARRETT BLANC senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

“The strategy to renegotiate it, as I understood it, was to first get the EU3 [Britain, France and Germany] and the United States to agree to release a statement some time between now and May 12 because May 12 is when the president’s going to have to recertify sanctions relief for Iran or not,” Kroenig said.

He said the next step “would be to try to get China and Russia on board with these same sentiments.”

Russia has an economic interest in keeping the agreement in place, because it sells various nuclear powerrelated products and services to Iran. Beijing, which is also Iran’s economic partner, may be less inclined to go along with Trump’s demands following the $150 billion in tariffs he has threatened to slap on China.

If all six countries spoke with the same voice, that might provide enough leverage to bring Iran to the negotiating table, Kroenig said. Iran has so far refused to renegotiate any part of the agreement.

“My understanding is that was the strategy under [former National Security Advisor H.R.] McMaster for renegotiating,” Kroenig said. “Now, with Bolton coming in, he has said this is a bad deal and we should pull out altogether. So, maybe on May 12, the president will just say, ‘Nope, not good enough, bad deal, I’m reinstating U.S. sanctions’ — which would be a very different approach.”

EUROPE’S ROLE McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis argued

”

that however flawed the agreement was, reneging on it would isolate the U.S., not Iran, and create a transatlantic rift. Experts say that torpedoing the agreement may also make it that much harder to tackle non-nuclearrelated issues, such Iran’s ballistic missile program and its destabilizing activities in the region, such as its meddling in Syria and Yemen. Those concerns were explicitly left out of the initial deal because the nuclear threat was considered more dangerous at the time. But the administration argues that by doing so, the nuclear pact fails to take a broad-based view of Iran’s behavior.

While Europeans agree that Iran’s behavior is a problem, they worry that Trump will back out of the nuclear deal no matter what concessions they offer, given the president’s widely publicized hatred of the agreement. So for weeks, the British, French and Germans have been trying to walk a fine line between appeasing the administration without alienating Iran and scuttling the deal altogether.

Europeans are reportedly amenable to two of Trump’s proposed fixes: sanctions on Iran’s long-range missile program and expanded inspections (even though Tehran considers unfettered access to its military sites a nonstarter). Ditching sunset clauses, however, is a tougher sell because that would essentially entail renegotiating the deal, which took years of delicate diplomacy to hammer out. Another problem is convincing other EU member states such as Italy and Spain to go SEE IR AN • PAGE 10

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Iran CONTINUED • PAGE 8

along with sanctions targeting Iran’s ballistic missiles because it could mean sacrificing lucrative business contracts with Iran.

Senior State Department official Brian Hook and his European counterparts “have been trying to develop a package of measures to placate the U.S.,” said James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “And as I understand it, what they’re negotiating is getting closer and closer to the European position, not to the U.S. position.”

An issue for Europe is whether a U.S. withdrawal from the Iran agreement will lead to a re-imposition of so-called secondary sanctions against European businesses. Secondary sanctions would prohibit companies that do businesses in Iran from doing business in the United States. Those sanctions were in place until 2015, when the agreement took effect, and “were really helpful,” Kroenig said. “We really put [the Europeans] in a tough spot. We forced them to choose — do you want to buy cheap Iranian oil and gas, or would you rather have access to the U.S. market and the U.S. dollar and the U.S. financial system? So, for most banks and for most corporations, there was no choice there.”

He said European governments were disinclined to align themselves with Trump’s threatening posture until bankers and corporate leaders told them that “we can’t afford to lose the U.S. market. Please join the U.S. sanctions.”

Even if Trump withdraws from the JCPOA, he could offer Europeans a reprieve by opting

10 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

PHOTO: EUROPEAN EXTERNAL ACTION SERVICE

European Union Foreign Affairs Representative Federica Mogherini and her delegation meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in August last year to discuss implementation of the Iran nuclear deal.

The so-called EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) have been in talks with the Trump administration in an attempt to salvage the nuclear accord ahead of a May 12 deadline when President Trump has threatened to walk away from the deal.

to phase in sanctions, hitting Iranian entities with unilateral penalties while waiving secondary sanctions until a compromise can be reached.

Re-imposing direct sanctions against Iran would have a milder impact on that country, because most of the U.S. sanctions that were in place when the nuclear agreement was signed stayed in place after it took effect.

“The main thing the JCPOA gave Iran is the ability to buy [non-military] aircraft off the U.S.,” Acton said. “From Iran’s perspective, the single-most important piece of sanctions relief they got under the JCPOA was the lifting of secondary sanctions. The lifting of primary U.S. sanctions against Iran, with the exception of aircraft, wasn’t such a big deal.”

IRAN’S REACTION But even the lifting of secondary sanctions

did not give many Iranians the economic boost they were hoping for. This gets to the heart of Tehran’s main complaint about the nuclear agreement — that fears of running afoul of U.S. law have prevented European banks and companies from investing in Iran despite the lifting of sanctions.

Even though Tehran has threatened to restart its nuclear program if the U.S. kills the deal, it may be motivated to work with the EU3 and Russia and China to preserve the nuclear accord given how much the Iranian economy needs foreign investment. Iran may also fear a U.S. military strike, particularly with hawks like Bolton and Pompeo now in power.

But some experts fear that if the U.S. abandons the pact, it will empower hardliners in the regime, including Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, at the expense of moderates like President Hassan Rouhani, who has struggled

to show ordinary Iranians the tangible results of sanctions relief (also see “Hardliners Fight to Unseat Iran’s Moderate President in Critical Election” in the May 2017 issue). Hardliners who fought against the nuclear agreement from the start may now have an excuse to walk away from it, or Rouhani may be forced to restart the nuclear program just to save face and fend off political challenges.

“Iran will not violate the nuclear deal, but if the United States withdraws from the deal, they will surely regret it,” Rouhani vowed last month as Tehran marked National Nuclear Technology Day. “Our response will be stronger than what they imagine and they would see that within a week.”

The United States will “absolutely not” be better off if Trump withdraws from the Iran deal, said Jarrett Blanc, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. If that happens, “then you run the risk that Iran returns to full-scale [uranium] enrichment, that they don’t comply with all these transparency measures, that you return to this position of ambiguity throughout the region about whether or not Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapon, which is bad and dangerous for us, and at the same time, driving a wedge between us and our closest allies.”

Blanc added that “there are a lot of decisions the administration would have to make in terms of what specifically they mean by killing the deal. As far as I know, they haven’t really gone through that planning process at this point.”

The appointments of Bolton and Pompeo may mean that they never do. WD John Brinkley is a freelance writer and was chief speechwriter for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in the Obama administration.

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WD | United States

Bolton of Lightening Shrewd Operator and Controversial Adviser Takes the Reins at National Security Agency

BY RYAN R. MIGEED

J

ohn Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President George W. Bush and a controversial foreign policy commentator, officially started his duties as President Donald Trump’s third national security adviser on April 9.

His resume for the position is long and his reputation is polarizing. Bolton held various roles in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, working at times in the State Department, Justice Department and USAID. In 2000, Bolton, a Yale-educated native of Baltimore, Md., was a lawyer for George W. Bush’s presidential campaign during the Florida recount. Following the election, he was sworn in as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

Over Senate opposition to his nomination as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Bush gave Bolton a recess appointment to the post in August 2005 — an unlikely choice given Bolton’s disdain for multilateral diplomacy and his infamous declaration that if the U.N. Headquarters “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

Although Bush re-nominated Bolton as U.N. ambassador in November 2006 at the end of his recess appointment, Bolton resigned in the face of another divisive confirmation battle.

While he is perceived as a radical risk-taker for his advocacy of pre-emptive strikes on Iran and North Korea, Bolton is firmly within the Republican establishment. Indeed, he helped define the Republican mainstream as a top adviser to George W. Bush and as a staunch proponent of the Iraq War, which he continues to defend as necessary to this day, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Bolton was also a foreign policy adviser to Republican Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign.

Together with the move of Mike Pompeo from CIA director to secretary of state, however, many in Washington see a hawkish new foreign policy team taking shape that reinforces Trump’s most aggressive impulses.

Bolton “is going to aid and abet the president,” said Edward Gnehm, a former U.S. ambassador to Jordan and Kuwait who now teaches at the George Washington University.

TICKING TIME BOMB ON IRAN? One of the most pressing decisions this new foreign policy team faces is whether to recertify the Iran nuclear deal by May 12. That’s when Trump could very well reinstate U.S. sanctions on Iran that were suspended under the agreement, which in turn could scuttle the landmark 2015 deal to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program (also see story on page 8).

Trump, a fierce opponent of the deal, now has two chief foreign policy advisers who have also repeatedly slammed it. In a 2015 New York Times op-ed, Bolton argued that “to stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran” and push for regime change. Bolton, in fact, worked to derail European talks with Tehran during his time with the Bush administration, when Iran’s nuclear program was far less advanced.

“Mr. Trump correctly sees Mr. Obama’s deal as a massive strategic blunder, but his advisers have inexplicably persuaded him not to withdraw,” Bolton wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed lambasting the Iran deal in January.

Indeed, Trump cited his differences with former 12 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

CREDIT: UN PHOTO / PAULO FILGUEIRAS

Then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton briefs correspondents on the Middle East at the U.N. Headquarters in August 2006.

Known for his hawkish views, Bolton famously said that if the U.N. Headquarters “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

“

He knows what he wants to do and he’s a ruthless bureaucratic operator in making it happen.

”

ROBERT A. MANNING

senior fellow at the Atlantic Council

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Iran in his decision to replace him.

“Bolton and Pompeo will reinforce the president’s gut feeling” on the Iran deal, according to Thomas Countryman, a veteran diplomat and former acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security who was pushed out by the Trump administration last year and is now at the Arms Control Association.

Having held the same position at State as Bolton, Countryman told The Diplomat that there are “essential skills” learned in a position dedicated to dealing with arms control and nuclear nonproliferation that would be useful background for a national security adviser. He also provided some insight into Bolton’s combative history with arms control agreements.

“There are very few nonproliferation agreements of which Bolton is a fan,” Countryman told us.

As Spencer Ackerman reported for the Daily Beast in a March 31 article, Bolton was a principal architect of the George W. Bush administration’s abandonment

of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, which Moscow argued underpinned the entire framework of international security. Leaving the treaty enabled the Bush administration to further its ambitions to build a ballistic missile shield. But many experts believe the move reignited an arms race between Russia and the U.S. Now some arms control experts worry Bolton may turn to dismantling other arms control agreements without acknowledging the consequences of doing so.

The Iran deal is but one example of some major agreements Bolton and Trump could tear up.

Another is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the first major U.S.-U.S.S.R. treaty signed by Reagan. While Russia has committed violations of the INF Treaty, it gives the U.S. an advantage by limiting missiles with a range of 300 to 3,500 miles, according to Ackerman.

“Giving up the [INF] Treaty would allow the Russians to deploy intermediate-range missiles that would threaten our European allies,” Countryman said.

Countryman also voiced concern with the fact that the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review does not acknowledge or recommit to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), as President Obama’s review had. Under the NPT, which entered into force in 1970, the U.S. and other nuclear-weapon states committed to pursue nuclear disarmament.

Nowhere is the threat of nuclear proliferation greater than with North Korea, which withdrew from the NPT in 2003, according to the Arms Control Association.

NORTH KOREA AND CHINA WILDCARDS For North Korea, the timing of Bolton’s appointment was conspicuous. He took up the position the month before the highly anticipated meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, helping to advise and prepare the U.S. president for what many hope will be a historic beginning to end the North’s rapidly expanding nuclear program.

But Bolton, who actively sought to undermine multiparty negotiations with North Korea during the Bush administration, has repeatedly stressed that military action is the only way to deal with Pyongyang, despite the incalculable human costs of such a war.

In a February Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bolton defended what he called the legal case for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, which last year detonated its sixth and most powerful nuclear test and launched intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

“Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an ‘imminent threat.’ They are wrong,” he wrote. “The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times.

Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation.”

But even assuming Kim masters the ability to fuse a nuclear warhead onto a ballistic missile capable of striking the continental U.S. — a feat that may only be months away, according to Pompeo — the theoretical danger may not outweigh the very real consequences of even a pre-emptive “bloody nose” strike, which most experts say could spiral into a conflict that kills millions.

“No one’s ever accused him of being a regional expert,” said Robert A. Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously served as an adviser for policy and public diplomacy to the assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

Pursuing regime change in North Korea, which both Bolton and Pompeo have at times supported, would be “reckless and stupid,” Manning told The Diplomat.

Bolton is “very clear that there should be regime change in Iran and North Korea, and military force should be used to achieve those goals,” Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama, told The New York Times in a March 24 article. “If you hire him, you’re making a clear signal that’s what you want.”

Bolton could also upend longstanding U.S. foreign policy as it relates to China. In a January 2017 op-ed, Bolton called for re-evaluating the “one-China policy,” whereby the U.S. recognizes that Taiwan is part of China.

Bolton’s proposals included negotiating the return of U.S. military personnel and infrastructure to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province. While many independence-minded Taiwanese may welcome the increased U.S. engagement, other worry about being used as a pawn in Trump’s showdown with China, particularly after Trump slapped China with massive tariffs, igniting fears of a trade war.

“The whole U.S.-China relationship is very volatile,” said Manning, who also served on the secretary of state’s policy planning staff during the George W. Bush administration and as a counter-proliferation senior strategist in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2010 to 2012.

Manning argues that the assumptions underpinning decades of bipartisan U.S. policy

PHOTO: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE / NAVY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 1ST CLASS KATHRYN E. HOLM

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, right, greets National Security Advisor John Bolton at the Pentagon in March 2018.

Speculation is rife whether Mattis, who favors a more pragmatic approach to Iran, will clash with Bolton, who has suggested bombing the regime.

on China — that China would help sustain the capitalist tenets of global trade rather than rival them, and that China would continue making gradual internal reforms — have proven false.

As the “bipartisan consensus” on China breaks down, U.S. policymakers are still searching for a new one, Manning said.

line with the conservative establishment. And those views may not necessarily be wrong when it comes to the dangers facing the U.S. today. “A nuclear-armed Iran is far more dangerous than John Bolton,” wrote David French in a March 23 article for National Review. “A North Korea capable of incinerating American cities is far more dangerous than John Bolton.

The question is how we prevent those truly ‘horrifying’ risks. The foreign-policy debate is frequently between hawks and doves, and in the last administration, the doves repeatedly failed. It’s time to give a hawk a chance.”

Yet some observers say the fact that Bolton is squarely within the Republican mainstream is part of the problem, given that GOP hawks blundered the Iraq War and typically put more value in costly military adventures than in preventative diplomacy.

Harvard professor Stephen Walt, writing in a March 23 Foreign Policy article, said Bolton’s appointment harkens to a time of “Cheneyism,” referring to “a foreign policy that inflates threats, dismisses serious diplomacy, thinks allies are mostly a burden, is contemptuous of institutions, believes that the United States is so powerful that it can just issue ultimatums and expect others to cave, and believes that a lot of thorny foreign-policy problems can be solved by just blowing something up.”

But Bolton does not fit the typical neoconservative mold and is not in favor of humanitarian interventions or democracy promotion abroad. Rather, he is a firm believer that the U.S. should only intervene when it serves its geostrategic interests — and then withdraw — which is very much in line with Trump’s “America First” vision.

Former officials also downplay Bolton’s firebreathing op-eds.

“Taking hardline stances in op-ed pages is all good and well, but reality begins to set in once you’re briefed on military plans,” Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon intelligence official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Time in a SEE BOLT ON • PAGE 53

‘RUTHLESS BUREAUCRATIC OPERATOR’ Bolton takes pride in being an unapologetic, at-times abrasive bomb-thrower who has little need for diplomatic niceties. Although he’s been accused of belittling subordinates and bending facts to suit his agenda, his take-noprisoners attitude has also made him a shrewd operator — and a formidable opponent. Given the chaos and high turnover that have plagued the White House, Trump could probably use a man who by all accounts is skilled at navigating the foreign policy bureaucracy and using the levers of government to achieve his ends.

Gnehm, who as ambassador to Jordan during the Iraq War frequently consulted with Bolton, described him as “very knowledgeable of the system” and “very good at using the system to get what he wants.”

Gnehm also characterized Bolton as “more likely to undermine things than support things.”

“He knows what he wants to do and he’s a ruthless bureaucratic operator in making it happen,” Manning told The Diplomat.

However, there are those who dismiss the apocalyptic warnings about Bolton as national security advisor and those who believe his views will be moderated by a foreign policy decision-making apparatus that includes a variety of actors, among them Chief of Staff John Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other top military leaders who are likely to disagree with Bolton on Iran and North Korea.

“I think this notion everybody talks about, that the risks of war have gone up, is wrong,” Stephen Hadley, who served as George W. Bush’s national security adviser, told David E. Sanger and Gardiner Harris of The New York Times, arguing that Bolton’s tough talk can be used as leverage in an effort to deter, not provoke, war.

Bolton’s supporters argue that he is often portrayed as a warmonger, but they also point out that his hawkish views are very much in

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WD | Middle East

Iraq’s Unstable Peace Parliamentary Elections Will Test War-Torn Nation’s Democratic Progress

BY AILEEN TORRES-BENNETT

I

raq has a troubled history of dictatorship, conflict and sectarian fragmentation, and its struggles are far from over. It’s been 50 years since the Ba’ath Party took over the government in a 1968 coup, with Saddam Hussein riding into power on its coattails. Hussein was ousted in 2003 by the U.S.-led invasion, ushering in an era of Iraq trying to find its footing as a democratic state but hobbled by violent power struggles between its Shiite majority and once-ruling Sunni minority, as well as geopolitical shifts in the region and the threat of the Islamic State.

The terrorist group seized wide swaths of territory in 2014 by capitalizing on Sunni marginalization and a weak central government. With America’s help, Baghdad was able to declare victory over the Islamic State last year, although the insurgency remains a potent destabilizing force (also see “Obama’s Strategy to Defeat Terrorist Group Lives on Under Trump” in the September 2017 issue).

Reconstruction is the focus right now, but the process will be long and harrowing — and expensive. A major donors’ conference in February mustered only a fraction of the $88 billion the Iraqi government asked for to rebuild its shattered cities and towns.

Iraq is by no means a failed state. It is managing to keep itself somewhat together, but it can’t do that on its own yet — despite the investment of billions of dollars in U.S. aid and an American military presence that at its peak reached 166,000 troops (but is now down to just over 5,000).

There are myriad forces, both internal and external, preventing the country from achieving stability. It’s not an impossible goal, but it will require savvy political management to keep the various factions of society from turning on one another, plus continued support from other countries. That includes the U.S., whose leaders have understood the strategic importance of Iraq but face a public that has grown weary of America’s 15-year entanglement in the war-riven country.

One bright spot: elections.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled for May 12, with thousands of candidates competing for nearly 330 seats.

“Throughout the travails we’ve had over the last 14, 15 years since the regime change, we have had elections as constitutionally mandated all the time,” said Fareed Yasseen, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, at a panel at the U.S. Institute of Peace in April.

“We did not miss a single one, so we are going to hold these elections,” he said.

“They’re going to be held under difficult conditions, but I can assure you that there is great goodwill, and a strong will, in Iraq to make these work,” including

14 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

PHOTO: U.S. ARMY / STAFF SGT. ALEX MANNE

Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service surgeon Lt. Col. Hayder Al Sudani, right, and Sallah Kahdum treat patients at a processing station for internally displaced people near Mosul on March 3, 2017. With help from U.S. forces, Iraqis dislodged the Islamic State from Mosul and other Iraqi cities last year, although millions remain displaced by the fighting and reconstruction aid is scarce.

“

[Elections are] going to be held under difficult conditions, but I can assure you that there is great goodwill, and a strong will, in Iraq to make these work.

FAREED YASSEEN ambassador of Iraq to the United States

asking NGOs to provide international observers to strengthen the legitimacy of the results.

SECTARIAN FISSURES Shortly after President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 under the now-debunked pretense that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the country of 37 million plunged into freefall. A Sunniled insurgency, spearheaded by al-Qaeda fighters, emerged to battle U.S. coalition forces and the new Shiite leadership, resulting in a sectarian bloodbath that killed possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and forced Bush to launch a 2007 troop surge to tamp down the violence.

Eventually, President Obama wound down American troop commitments, but sporadic violence continued to wreak havoc on the country while Sunni grievances against the government of divisive Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki festered.

It was against this backdrop that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, exploded

”

onto the scene in June 2014, capturing large tracts of territory and declaring its self-styled Islamic caliphate. In fact, the radical Sunni militant group, a splinter of al-Qaeda, had its origins in the U.S.-led invasion, when it rose to oppose America’s occupation of the country.

The fall of Mosul in June 2014, when the Islamic State drove out Iraq’s humiliated army, was a key moment for Iraq because it ushered in a semblance of national unity, however tentative.

While some Sunni communities initially preferred the Islamic State’s harsh rule over the chaotic, corrupt state of affairs in Baghdad, sentiment quickly soured against the Islamic State’s barbaric tactics. The civil war that ensued until 2017 was fought between the Islamic State and civilians, not just Iraq’s military, Ambassador Yasseen said.

The idea of nationalism was certainly not common in Iraq, but the galvanizing opposition against a common enemy that brutalized the whole population showed that it was indeed possible to have na-

tional solidarity in a country as fragmented as Iraq.

“The fight against ISIS was carried out

by Iraqis,” as opposed to outside troops, Yasseen said at the panel, “and they paid a heavy burden of blood, so this is a victory where we really have a lot of skin and even blood in the game, and we are concerned. We want it to stick. In a strange way, ISIS actually brought us together.”

He added, “Their ideology pushed them to do things that were unthinkable, unacceptable, beheading Americans, [enslaving] Yazidi women, killing all the Yazidi men, expelling the minorities from Mosul — nobody can accept that.

And so we all united.”

But with the Islamic State now routed out of its territorial holdings, Iraq’s sense of national unity has proved fleeting, and the sectarian tensions that were put on pause have resurfaced. The upcoming elections will determine if coalition governing can work in this latest iteration of the tug of war among the country’s many competing factions — or whether those factions will dig in further, possibly sparking a new era of violent clashes.

Iraqi society is divided into many groups, including Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Christians and Yazidis. Among the most prominent sectarian groups in Iraq are the Kurds. Kurdistan, officially an autonomous region of Iraq, made a play for statehood in a referendum last September that resulted in an overwhelming popular vote for indepen-

dence. Kurdistan has economic clout in Iraq because of the oil fields it controls. During the campaign against the Islamic State, the U.S.-backed Kurds proved to be among the most battle-hardened fighters able to not only reclaim territory, but also expand the Kurds’ territorial claims.

But their bid for independence backfired on the Kurds, spectacularly (also see “Former U.S., Iraqi Diplomats Criticize Wisdom of Kurdish Independence Vote” in the October 2017 issue).

Baghdad decided to flex its muscle and kept the Kurds in line with the support of Washington, which feared destabilizing the country. So for now, the Kurds’ long-held dream of independence will remain just that, a dream.

What the Kurds are left with is having to play the game in Iraq’s government, where they are just one of many groups vying for power and a say in their future.

“We believe that the constitution is the best guide for our relationship with Baghdad,” said Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) representative to the United States, at the panel with Yasseen.

“The constitution does have shortcomings, and every group will find shortcomings that apply to itself, but broadly the constitution is the way forward. It protects the rights of different groups, different ethnicities, different religions. It sets out a federal structure for Iraq, which hasn’t truly been implemented, and if implemented, I believe it will strengthen Iraq.”

That includes the all-important question of oil wealth, which has been the most divisive issue between the KRG and Baghdad. “We need a revenue-sharing mechanism that enables every citizen of Iraq to share in the wealth,” Rahman said, as well as a joint security mechanism in the disputed territories, which, she pointed out, was previously successful.

Of course, one of the reasons that the Islamic State was able to make strong inroads in Iraq was because of ordinary citizens’ frustrations with the government, which has long been accused of corruption, patronage and an inability to delivery security or economic stability.

But Yasseen said those grievances predated the current administration or the U.S.-led invasion and have their roots in Hussein’s authoritarian rule, which benefited the Sunni ruling class at the expense of Iraq’s Shiite and Kurdish masses.

“The extremist ideologies in Iraq … came in through the 1990s through Saddam’s faith campaign that opened the door to them,” Yasseen said. “These extremist ideologies were the engine that brought tens of thousands of foreign fighters into Iraq.”

CRUCIAL VOTE What Iraq should focus on now is encouraging its disgruntled citizens to buy into the legitimacy of government by participating in elections.

There is hope Iraqis can do just that. In 2014, amid the Islamic State blitzkrieg, Maliki resigned and Haider al-Abadi took over as prime minister. With America’s help, Abadi was able to rebuild the tattered army and restore the country’s sovereignty. He has also earned plaudits for balancing relations with the U.S. and Iran, Iraq’s Shiite ally. In the wake of the Islamic State’s defeat, Sunni fears of widespread reprisal killings by Iran-backed Shiite militias under the umbrella of the PMU (Popular Mobilization Units) never fully materialized. In fact, the PMU was officially recognized as a security force and is now being absorbed into the political system.

A March 31 editorial in The Economist opines that Iraq is finally getting back on its feet. The Islamic State is out, oil prices are on the rise, terrorist attacks are down dramatically, religious minorities feel safer, Kurdish nationalism has been put on the backburner

ABADI’S ELECTORAL CHANCES

Above, as Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi signs the guest book in the White House’s Roosevelt Room on March 20, 2017, President Trump leans over to read the note. At right, U.S. Army Sgt. David Diehl provides security outside a school in Baqubah, Iraq, on July 19, 2010. U.S. troops formally withdrew from Iraq in 2011, but last year President Trump reluctantly committed several thousand additional troops to help Abadi and his forces battle the Islamic State.

and secularism — once a calling card among politicians — is now downplayed.

“Iraq’s dominant religious parties used to flaunt their sectarian loyalties to get out the vote at elections,” the magazine wrote. “Now many hide them. An opinion poll last August showed that only 5% of Iraqis would vote for a politician with a sectarian or religious agenda. Yesteryear’s Shia [Shiite] supremacists these days promise to cherish the country’s diversity, and recruit other sects to their ranks.”

This civic trust is tenuous, though, because the nation has gone through a 50-year party dictatorship, sanctions, foreign occupation and a civil war. The Islamic State has not completely vanished. The economy has been battered, and foreigners aren’t exactly lining up to fund much-needed reconstruction efforts.

Polarizing actors such as Maliki are still angling for power. And a cutthroat web of factions still cling to their religious identity and age-old hatreds.

The government appears to be trying to rule as a democracy, but it is on unsteady national ground. While the people of Iraq are drained from fighting the Islamic State, they are still fighting each other.

STABILITY AND U.S. INVOLVEMENT The Islamic State no longer holds territory in Iraq, but it continues to haunt the country, adding to a potentially explosive situation.

“It’s a situation that is so complicated because conditions on the ground have gotten worse since the fall of Mosul,” Nicholas Heras, a Middle East security fellow at the Center for a New American Security, asserted. “The ISIS insurgency has picked up operational tempo.

There’s an ongoing challenge in disputed regions between Kurds and Iraq. Turkey seeks to expand its sphere of influence. There’s the possibility of Shia-on-Shia violence. The situation is quite complicated. There’s a general tenseness.”

“Recent lethal attacks in Baghdad, Hawija and elsewhere show that while ISIS may not hold the territory it once did in Iraq, the group remains able to reach into Iraq and cause deadly violence there,” Joshua Geltzer, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council and now a visiting professor at Georgetown Law Center, wrote in an email. “That will remain the case so long

CREDIT: OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY BENJAMIN APPLEBAUM

PHOTO: DOD / MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 2ND CLASS TED GREEN, U.S. NAVY

as ISIS is able to maintain some territorial safe haven in Syria, and perhaps even beyond that point in time.”

Adding to the instability is a humanitarian crisis stemming from Syria’s civil war and Iraq’s internally displaced people. The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, counts nearly 250,000 registered Syrian refugees in Iraq.

Kurdistan alone has 1.5 million Syrian refugees and internally displaced Iraqis, said Rahman at the panel. These refugees are straining already-strained resources.

“Iraq is an underdeveloped country,” said Heras. It may have a lot of oil wealth, but it is fundamentally weak “when it comes to infrastructure, access to education, potable water, equal economic distribution. That’s central to the political campaign going on in Iraq.”

Iraqis are extremely frustrated with their government. They want effective governance, which requires strong institutions, and Iraq cannot build this institutional base without the help of the United States. Iraqis are well aware of this, and they generally want the U.S. to continue supporting the country as it tries to find some stable footing.

While the U.S. is not interested in nation building, it does have a vested interest in stabilizing Iraq because of the country’s key role in the Middle East. President Trump has been trumpeting isolationism since he took office, but he seems to understand the need for the U.S. to retain some sort of presence in Iraq to check the Islamic State and Iranian hegemony.

Prime Minister Abadi is central to the U.S. exerting influence in Iraq. “Ideally, what the U.S. military would want is that Abadi weathers the political storms of 2018,” said Heras.

“As long as Abadi is in power, he seems willing to give the U.S. political cover, as long as U.S. troops remain on their bases and provide air support against ISIS. That’s a pillar of U.S. policy in the Near East. If Abadi goes, which could happen, the U.S. stands to be at great risk. U.S. troops would be directly targeted. The U.S. would be ignominiously told to leave.”

Abadi has managed to hold the country together in the face of constant conflict and deeply entrenched divisions, fending off political challenges, paying people’s salaries despite falling oil prices and “preventing the country from being used as a space for proxy wars by regional and international powers,” wrote Sajad Jiyad in an Oct. 16 article for Foreign Policy.

While he remains popular, Abadi’s victory is far from assured in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Jobs are scarce, government coffers are reliant on a volatile oil market, corruption is endemic and security remains tenuous. Most important, Iraq’s postwar politics are still dictated by sectarianism, with Sunnis, Kurds and a panoply of Shiite players agitating for power.

Margaret Coker and Falih Hassan, writing in a Jan. 30 article for The New York Times, said Abadi stumbled out of the gate by welcoming leaders of Iran-backed Shiite militias into his cross-sectarian coalition, dubbed the “Victory Alliance.”

“The Iranian-backed Shiite militias have won praise for helping defeat the Islamic State, but they have also been accused in sectarian atrocities, and their leaders are seen by many as tools of Iran. Sunni and Kurdish leaders were furious. Even a Shiite leader, Muqtada alSadr, a possible kingmaker in this vote, called the alliance ‘abhorrent,’” Coker and Hassan wrote. “Within 24 hours, Mr. Abadi had reversed himself, and the militia leaders left the coalition.”

Sadr represents both Abadi’s opposition and potential ally in the upcoming elections and their aftermath. Sadr is a popular Shiite cleric and militia leader with a history of fierce opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq. Not surprisingly, he has called for ousting the remaining U.S. troops in the country.

Another threat is Maliki, Abadi’s predecessor, who is eyeing a comeback. Maliki, in fact, remains the official leader of the Islamic Dawa party. “So in a classic example of the serpentine nature of Iraqi politics, Mr. Maliki has blocked Mr. Abadi from using Dawa resources for his campaign,” wrote Coker and Hassan.

Likewise, The Economist noted that Abadi’s challenges remain formidable. “Iraq has known, and wasted, other hopeful moments.

The overthrow of Saddam was botched by America, which shut Sunnis out of the new order. The respite won by its surge of troops in 2007-08 was botched by Nuri al-Maliki,” it wrote. “Iraq holds much promise, given its abundant oil and water and its educated population. And Mr. Abadi is remarkably popular among Sunnis even though he, like Mr. Maliki, is from Dawa.

“Yet Mr. Abadi has failed to turn his military victory into political gain,” the magazine cautioned. “Confronted with a dispirited population, powerful militias, lurking jihadists and scheming politicians, Iraq’s governing class has yet to show it knows how to win the peace.”

No matter what the outcome of the elections, many experts say the U.S. cannot afford to turn its back on Iraq, even though public support for U.S. involvement has waned with time and lives lost.

“Iraq has a lot of bad memories for the American public,” said Heras. “There’s a desire to keep Iraq at arm’s length.”

“But it’d be a mistake to think that the United States can somehow declare victory and depart from Iraq,” wrote Geltzer in an email.

“We’ve seen in ISIS’s own rise how quickly the remnants of even a depleted terrorist network can regrow, and it’d be a terrible development for Iraq, the broader region and the United States if something similar were to occur again.” WD Aileen Torres-Bennett is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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Pioneering Techplomacy Denmark’s First-Ever Ambassador to Silicon Valley Tackles Promise and Pitfalls of Big Tech

BY ANNA GAWEL

T

echnology powers our lives.

It connects us with billions of people and synthesizes a world of information at our fingertips. Its algorithms predict which shirt we’ll buy or who we might date. It gives us the GPS coordinates to get us where we need to go — and one day may give us driverless cars to chauffeur us there. It even offers us fitness apps to remind us when we’ve been staring at the computer too long.

But some say this digital revolution is quietly ruining our lives, chipping away at our privacy and fueling an addiction to a virtual reality that distracts us from the real thing.

These mounting criticisms have inspired a “techlash,” as Silicon Valley’s life-altering innovations are increasingly viewed with suspicion, not awe.

In Washington, lawmakers are considering whether tech giants like Amazon and Google have become too big for their (and our own) good. Meanwhile, people wonder if their “news” was created by bots and trolls (or Russian agents) and if their personal information has been given out like candy to everyone from campaign profilers to app developers. Even once-vaunted wunderkinds like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have copped to serious mistakes in handling data and admitted that social media may be ironically stunting our ability to connect as human beings.

But like the industrial revolution before it, the digital revolution is here to stay and, despite its dark side, has irrevocably benefited mankind. So today the focus has shifted on how to manage the inexorable rise of technology — and avoid its pitfalls.

Denmark has recognized this trend and embraced it, appointing the world’s first-ever tech ambassador. Casper Klynge’s mandate is to liaise and make connections as any ambassador would — just not with other governments, but with the tech pioneers of Silicon Valley, including Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter, among others.

“It’s basically an attempt by the Danish government to treat technology and the tech companies in a way that is comparable to how we would treat a bilateral relationship to a country or how we would engage an international organization. So it’s a broad-based dialogue on things that we agree on and on things we don’t agree on,” Klynge told us during a phone interview from his office in Palo Alto, Calif., adding that his appointment last year was also a recognition of the integral role technology plays in the world, along with all the opportunities and challenges that entails.

And in light of the recent scandals tainting the tech world, Klynge says his

PHOTO: MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF DENMARK

“

Those that doubted the message that a [tech] ambassador was needed, I think they now see and understand what we’re trying to do and its importance.

CASPER KLYNGE tech ambassador of Denmark

appointment affirms the need for what he calls “techplomacy,” which seeks to bring the public and private sectors together to collaborate on how they can foster innovation while upholding basic rights and freedoms. “Those that doubted the message that a [tech] ambassador was needed, I think they now see and understand what we’re trying to do and its importance.”

NEW ERA OF ‘TECHPLOMACY’ Klynge has a staff of roughly a dozen people in Silicon Valley, four in Copenhagen, three in Beijing and is establishing a presence in Nairobi, Kenya.

A former ambassador to Indonesia who has served in the Danish Embassy in Cyprus and worked on Africa and Afghanistan issues, Klynge says his current job is not all that different from traditional diplomacy, with some notable exceptions.

“One thing which is wonderful is that

”

I don’t have to wear a suit and tie every day. That’s not the dress code in Silicon Valley,” he quipped. “Joking aside, there are some things that are actually very similar to what I was doing before, whether it was working for Denmark, or for the European Union or for NATO — sort of the very classical diplomacy work. The difference is that we are engaging of course with a different partner here.”

While that partner is a bit unorthodox, it makes sense given the enormous financial and political clout that tech giants wield — comparable to many nation-states. For instance, companies like Apple are increasingly speaking out on highly charged political debates such as President Trump’s immigration crackdown or his dismissal of climate change.

On the financial front, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google together boast a market capitalization worth a staggering $2.8 trillion, according to Scott Galloway, who wrote about the so-called “big four” in a Feb. 8 article for Esquire.

Just looking at Facebook alone, the social media platform’s user base of 2.2 billion people worldwide is twice as big as the combined populations of the G7 countries, and its market capitalization is larger than the entire GDP of Denmark.

Klynge said that while a small part of his job involves encouraging hightech investment to Denmark, the commercial aspect “is perhaps only 5 or 10 percent of what I spend my time on. It is really a foreign policy initiative in the sense that if we zoom out, this is about what will happen in global affairs in the next decade, what role will technology play in perhaps shifting power balances globally but also in creating winners and losers,” he explained.

“We are sort of a clearinghouse or forward operating base looking into the tech industry — what’s coming our way, what new opportunities will be arriving in the next decade, how do we adapt to that, but also looking into areas that might challenge our way of organizing our societies,” he added. “And that’s the traditional role of any embassy around the world — you gather information that you send back in order to influence knowledge and policies.”

The difference is that the questions Klynge deals with are in many ways far more consequential to humanity.

Klynge, 44, said he is working to SEE T EC HPLOMAC Y • PAGE 18 THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 17

Techplomacy CONTINUED • PAGE 17

brace Denmark’s government and its 5.7 million people for a “mental revolution” ushered in by big tech and big data. In the end, technology will not bring about the Orwellian dystopia that its critics fear, or the utopian paradise its proponents envisioned. Klynge says the future of technology is all about the people who use and develop it, which is why reaching out to those people is so vital.

He said it’s been a privilege “to engage with some very talented, very creative, very innovative people in this sector that are really working on cutting-edge solutions that I think for 99 percent of the cases will actually do a lot of good to humanity and to the world.”

TIDE TURNS AGAINST BIG TECH But lately, it’s the other 1 percent that has captured the world’s attention. The advent of the internet bred an online Wild West that most of us never questioned before because these advances made our lives easier. But the recent avalanche of accusations — from massive privacy breaches to the manipulation of information, and even our minds — has many questioning whether it’s time to tame the titans of Silicon Valley.

Facebook in particular has found itself in the crosshairs.

Last month, the discovery that “malicious actors” exploited Facebook’s search tools to harvest information on most of its 2 billion users cast a harsh light on how technology is redefining privacy in the 21st century.

The revelations came after a whistleblower for Cambridge Analytica exposed how the Trump-hired political consultancy firm improperly gathered the personal information of 87 million Facebook users and their friends (Zuckerberg among them), including their work history, religious affiliations, reading habits and political views.

After initially dragging its feet, Facebook has moved aggressively to restore its battered reputation on both the national security and the consumer fronts. It is tightening privacy rules, giving users easier control of their information and limiting

PHOTO: EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT FLICKR

The European Parliament debates U.S. internet surveillance of European Union citizens during a June 11, 2013, meeting. The EU has taken the lead in addressing big tech’s avoidance of taxes and its market dominance. And this month, the EU will roll out a sweeping set of privacy rules known as General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, whose aim is to give users more control over their data.

PHOTO: PIXABAY / MOHAMED HASSAN

PHOTO: MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF DENMARK

The exhibition “European Research Leadership in Robotics” showed off the skills of the European Parliament’s first “robotic ambassadors,” as the iCub (from the Italian Institute of Technology) performed advance tasks.

how much data third parties can access (although the restrictions don’t apply to Facebook itself, which can still profile its users to target them with personalized advertising).

In an effort to curb foreign election interference, Facebook announced that it will force buyers of political or “issue” advertising to disclose their identities and will clearly label such ads. It will also employ thousands of additional people and artificial intelligence to fact-check posts and remove fake ac-

18 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

counts.

Facebook officials, including founder and CEO Zuckerberg, readily acknowledge that some form of government regulation is inevitable. The once-media shy Zuckerberg recently embarked on a public apology tour and weathered a marathon grilling on Capitol Hill in mid-April. He defended Facebook’s overall business model and stressed the social network’s value to society, but he repeatedly apologized for being too slow to spot foreign interference, fake

news and third-party privacy violations.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake,” he said, noting that Facebook is cooperating with Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Observers say it was a long overdue mea culpa after Zuckerberg initially shrugged off accusations that Kremlin-linked operatives used his platform to spread propaganda to tilt the 2016 U.S. election in President Trump’s favor.

But it remains to be seen if Zuckerberg’s about-face will quell the ongoing furor over election meddling, privacy breaches and monopoly-like business practices, which has sparked a backlash on both sides of the Atlantic.

European officials not only worry that Russia is using the internet to stoke populist, xenophobic political parties, they have also gone after tech companies for avoiding taxes and dominating the market.

The EU, in fact, has taken the lead in adopting sweeping privacy regulations that U.S. lawmakers may now emulate.

Even Trump has entered the fray, railing against Amazon, which accounts for some 40 percent of online shopping, for putting momand-pop retailers out of business.

All of the negative press (and tweets) have taken a financial toll. According to the Financial Times, big tech

lost one-quarter of a trillion dollars in stock market value in the two weeks after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. The EU has slapped billion-dollar fines on Google and Qualcomm for antitrust violations, while the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation that could result in hefty fines for Facebook.

And after years of unfettered growth, internet companies may be facing a new era of regulation as lawmakers increasingly call for big tech to be broken up — just as oil and telecommunications monopolies were at the turn of the 20th century.

“Companies like Facebook and Twitter and Google are American icons,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who is spearheading the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe of Russia’s role in the 2016 election, said during a recent awards dinner for journalists. “I don’t have

any interest in regulating them into oblivion. But as they’ve grown from dormroom startups into media behemoths ... they haven’t acknowledged that that kind of power comes with responsibility.”

But lawmakers are unlikely to enact any serious changes ahead of the 2018 midterm elections — and may not even know where to begin given their lack of tech literacy. Moreover, consumers still generally view tech companies favorably and are skeptical about government intervention. People will continue wanting to use their products for free and given their enormous profit margins, these companies can easily weather regulatory fines and stock market slumps.

Nevertheless, the barrage of criticism marks an unprecedented reckoning that the technological race may need to slow down — concerns that were heightened when a self-driving Uber car killed a pedestrian in Arizona last month.

Long before the current uproar, however, experts had been warning about the downsides of big tech for years.

Fears of artificial intelligence giving rise to robots that take over the planet are still mostly the stuff of Hollywood fiction. But as The Economist pointed out in a March 28 article, AI is quietly upending the workplace, as firms of all types harness the intelligence to hire and monitor workers, improve productivity and interact with customers. Less sophisticated but just as consequential is machine automation, which for decades has led to widespread manufacturing job losses — a trend that will only accelerate in the future. As technology replaces workers, policymakers are furiously debating whether the industry has become a job creator or job killer — and whether companies like Apple are taking advantage of a borderless world to dodge taxes.

Internet companies also struggle to police their users. Platforms such as Twitter and Reddit amplify hate and have long grappled with rampant sexism and abusive behavior, which has bullied many women and minorities offline. Meanwhile, moderators play an impossible game of whack-a-mole in trying to remove extremist content that radicalizes terrorists and peddles conspiracy theories without censoring legitimate speech (also see “Tech Giants Team Up to Take Terrorists, Extremist Propaganda Offline” in the October 2017

PHOTO: BY JOE RAVI / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS CC BY-SA 3.0

PHOTO: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

issue).

And then there are the more existential questions about the health effects of being connected 24-7. A January 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center showed that nearly a quarter of American adults go online “almost constantly.” And according to a study by Deloitte, the average American checks his or her phone nearly 50 times a day. For kids, it’s even more frequent.

Yet a growing body of evidence has shown that staring at postings of other people’s supposedly happy lives makes us sadder and lonelier.

Even top Facebook executives have admitted that the platform can be addictive and isolating. Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, recently confessed that the social network was designed not to unite us but to hook us and distract us by exploiting human psychology and our need for social affirmation (i.e. that ubiquitous little like button).

“It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other,” Parker told Axios’s Mike Allen last November. “It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Some elementary schools have even begun offering classes on how to set limits on screen time and avoid getting sucked into the bottomless world wide web.

‘BLESSING IN DISGUISE’ Klynge jokes that he’s not exactly the best person to offer tips on unplugging since he rarely ever does. But the one piece of advice he does give people is not to enter into social media naively, “because of course when you use the platforms, there is a collection of data — you

Above, a picture of better days: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks with then-Secretary of State John Kerry at the company’s new headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on June 23, 2016. Today, tech giants such as Facebook, Google, bottom right, and Apple, top right, are facing increasing scrutiny in Washington, where lawmakers are debating whether to break up big tech’s monopoly over the market and how to address widespread privacy breaches and the misuse of personal data.

PHOTO: BY RUNNER1928 - OWN WORK / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS CC BY-SA 3.0

PHOTO: PIXABAY / SIMON STEINBERGER

know that, and every once in a while you just have to be careful about what sort of information we are voluntarily giving to the platforms,” he told us, arguing that there has been a degree of hypocrisy over the Cambridge Analytica flap. “I think as a consumer, it should come as no surprise that Facebook and these tech companies are collecting data on all of us.”

But that does not excuse them from misusing that data to undermine key values such as human rights, democracy and consumer protections, he added. In fact, Klynge says the current techlash “could be a blessing in disguise in the sense that this is a wake-up call for some of the big tech companies to understand that they cannot sit in their corner offices and just claim neutrality on a lot of [these] issues. That’s simply not how the world is and it’s not how these platforms are operating. They do exercise influence. The way they set up their platforms have real impact on people, and I think the first important step is to recognize that … and [have] a dialogue on what

needs to be achieved.

“The big question is of course once the headlines die down and the external pressure on the corporations is reduced, will we still see the kind of proactive engagement that we’re seeing right now? I think the jury is still out on that. But I’ll remain an optimist and I sincerely hope that we see a new way of leadership in the tech business — not only in the U.S. by the way,” he said. “This is a global issue, not a U.S. issue.”

EUROPE TAKES THE LEAD On that note, Klynge said Europe has been at the forefront of the techlash debate.

Later this month, the EU will roll out a sweeping set of privacy rules known as General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, whose aim is to give users more control over their data. The stringent rules force technology and digital advertising companies around the world — regardless of where they’re located, as long as they do business in Europe — to overhaul how personal information is collected, stored and used.

Failure to comply risks hefty fines or being shut out of a bloc of 500 million consumers. GDPR could also serve as a template for other nations, although because of cultural differences, Americans tend to be warier of government regulation. (Separately, the bloc is considering a proposal to raise over $6 billion by taxing tech companies who set up shop in low-tax countries like Luxembourg and Ireland.)

Klynge says he doesn’t see “any other actors stepping up to the plate showing leadership on setting the right boundaries for new technologies. I think what is very important to remember is that it’s not regulations or boundaries born out of fear or lack of wanting to use new technology,” he told us.

“But it is really about making sure that consumers are protected, that the data you and I use and generate every day, we have a fundamental ownership over that data.

And also we’re at a time and age where we’re not really sure what it can be used for.

We’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg on data usage.”

Klynge also stressed that Europe is mindful of the need to regulate tech companies without stifling innovation.

“Denmark might be able to play a helpful role to help

define the right balance on regulation and legislation because we are all pro-light touch — we don’t want to overregulate. We’re not concerned about the big companies; we’re concerned about specific activities of some of the big companies,” he explained. “And by the way, it’s not only directed toward the companies of Silicon Valley.

It’s a general approach to anti-trust discussions…. I think what we can say though is that at the end of the day, it is about protecting you and me as consumers.”

Yet that gets to the fundamental contradiction at the core of Facebook’s profit model, which is built on monetizing its users’ personal information to generate ad revenues (Google and Twitter do the same thing). And despite Zuckerberg’s efforts to overhaul Facebook’s newsfeed to emphasize “meaningful interaction” over vapid postings, the platform thrives on fake news and sensationalistic click bait that tends to go viral. Hate simply outperforms truth.

We asked Klynge how Facebook can reconcile this contradiction, whereby the company makes money because people give up personal information in exchange for using its services for free.

“I don’t know the answer to that question,” he replied,

SEE T EC HPLOMAC Y • PAGE 53 THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 19

WD | Nor th Africa

The Revolution Marches On Tunisia’s Democratic Experiment Enters New Phase with Local Elections

BY AILEEN TORRES-BENNETT

T

unisia’s Jasmine Revolution in 2011 that ousted then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali set off the Arab Spring, a series of popular uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa that resulted in the overthrow of sclerotic governments. But the early optimism of the Arab Spring has since dimmed, as the revolutionary protests led to chronic instability in places like Yemen and Libya, the rise of a new authoritarian regime in Egypt and bloody civil war in Syria.

Except in Tunisia. The country has clung to its initial hopes to enact reforms after a fruit cart vendor set himself on fire after being humiliated by the police.

But the road to democracy is a long and rocky one.

It’s early days yet, and the country still has to tackle the economic grievances that fueled the 2011 mass uprising — all while setting up its first local elections since the revolution and going about the business of governing during a fraught transition process.

Clearly, this is not impossible, seeing all the democracies that exist around the world. Each country has to start somewhere. Whether the transition to democracy is successful depends on time, resources and the willingness of the diverse segments of the population, including those already governing, to compromise and unite toward the same goal.

On that front, Tunisia has already made significant strides. After the overthrow of Ben Ali, who had ruled the North African nation for 23 years, the moderate Islamist Ennahdha party came to power. But it failed to jumpstart the moribund economy. And amid fears of growing extremism, its Islamic leanings faced a backlash in the historically progressive nation. After a series of protests, Ennahdha leaders made the unprecedented move to resign in favor of a technocratic government. They also adopted a liberal constitution guaranteeing key rights; launched a widely lauded national dialogue; and ushered in the peaceful transfer of power to the more secular Nidaa Tounes party, with whom Ennahdha now governs as part of a coalition.

But the government has struggled to address widespread joblessness. Despite expected economic growth in the next two years due to structural reforms and greater social stability, the growth has not been enough to curb inflation or youth unemployment, which remains staggeringly high. Even for those with jobs, wages can average as low as $7 to $10 a day.

Tunisia’s economic struggles have been exacerbated by austerity measures demanded by the IMF as part of a $2.8 billion loan program contingent on tough reforms that have, among other things, hiked taxes and the cost of gas. As a result, protests broke out earlier this year, with hundreds of people arrested.

There’s also the wildcard of terrorism. Terrorist attacks against tourists in Tunisia in 2015 were a huge security and economic blow to the country’s all-important tourist industry. And at one point, Tunisia contributed more foreign jihadists to the Islamic State takeover of Syria and Iraq than any other country on a per-capita basis.

Tunisians are now looking toward the upcoming municipal elections to decentralize their government, revive the economy and keep extremism at bay.

“Tunisia is tackling not only security and democratization and reforms — Tunisia is tackling every-

20 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

The grand avenue in Tunis was the site of the Jasmine Revolution in 2011 that ousted then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and set off the Arab Spring.

“

PHOTO: PIXABAY / 12019

Tunisia is tackling not only security and democratization and reforms — Tunisia is tackling everything.

FAYÇAL GOUIA, ambassador of Tunisia to the United States

thing,” said Fayçal Gouia, Tunisia’s ambassador to the U.S., at a panel in March at the Middle East Institute (MEI) on “Elections in Tunisia and hope for democratic reform.”

DECENTRALIZATION Regularly held free and fair elections, including at the local level, are an integral part of a healthy, functional democracy, and Tunisia has been on the fence about when to hold its first local elections since 2011.

The date for municipal elections has been pushed back several times, with the argument that the country is not politically ready for elections. They have finally been scheduled for May 6.

In a mature democracy, the emphasis is often on the presidential election. In Tunisia, municipal elections are just as important, if not more so, than the parliamentary and presidential elections coming up in 2019. The results of the local elections will influence the national elections, indicating which parties and independent candidates will hold more sway among voters.

There has been a tug of war between working through the process of decentralizing government and the timing of elections. Political actors in Tunisia had been reluctant to set the date for elections until a decentralization law was finalized. But activists fear the delays are an effort by members of the old guard and political elite to further entrench themselves in power.

”

Tunisian government is based on the French system, whereby power is consolidated at the national level. Local governments are therefore dependent on the national government for budget and authority.

The new constitution that was established in 2014 included language that called for decentralizing government to give more power to municipal authorities.

The decentralization law continues to be debated, and until it is finalized, municipal governments lack influence.

While some Tunisians were pushing for the date of municipal elections to be set, others wanted the decentralization law to be settled before holding elections. Critics think Tunisia has put the cart before the horse by delinking the electoral process from the decentralization of power.

“At this stage, the municipal councils don’t have much power,” said Elie Abouaoun, the director of Middle East and North Africa programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “The system is still the old one under the French mandate. It’s a heavily centralized system. Tunisia’s parliament and the political establishment have been debating the law of decentralization in the last two years. Once this law is voted, then municipal councils will have more power and access to resources. This is what the political parties are eying. Candidates are looking for how much power they can wield once this law passes.”

SEE T U N IS IA • PAGE 22

Global Vantage Point | WD

Unfinished Business Op-Ed: U.S. Must Build on Its Diverse Mosaic of Cultures — And That Includes Puerto Rico

BY PEDRO ROSSELLÓ

T

he U.S. national agenda calls for a discussion on the changing composition and nature of our population. Today, minority groups make up 35 percent of the entire population, and Hispanics have surpassed African Americans by 3.5 percentage points as the largest minority. If current growth patterns of minorities continue, the U.S. will be made up entirely of minorities by 2050.

There are already four states where the combined minorities are in fact the majority: Hawaii (76.7 percent), New Mexico (56.5 percent), California (55.5 percent) and Texas (50.2 percent). Washington, D.C., could also be included in this group, as well as other large states such as New York, Florida and Arizona, where minority groups make almost 40 percent of the population.

This demographic shift means that the paradigms that have historically defined the U.S. as a country are rapidly changing. The U.S. is no longer the “melting pot” it was thought to be. The idea of the U.S. as a society where different cultures and ethnicities melt in a large cauldron to produce a homogeneous “American” no longer holds. Instead, we should envision the current U.S. population as a large mosaic, made up of diverse cultures and individual backgrounds, each lending its color, form and texture to the entire composition. And all those individual pieces are held together by the mortar and grout that are our laws, civil rights and the individual and collective liberties that unite us all as equal citizens.

Yale Law professor Amy Chua, in her 2018 book “Political Tribes,” points out that the key to the success of our American society depends on our ability to integrate diverse population groups into an “ethnicity transcending national identity.” As such, the U.S. must start taking advantage of the great asset that its cultural diversity provides. It also needs to ensure the stability and power of the American people by prioritizing the equality of its citizens.

This is what social scientists call the “soft power” of a nation: a power that comes not from military or economic might, but rather from citizens enjoying their social and civil rights and forming a cohesive, functional society based on diverse cultural experiences and backgrounds. Our nation’s slogan, “e pluribus unum (out of many, one),” now applies to the diversification of the modern American mosaic.

But a nuanced analysis of these new demographics must not only be focused on the increasing presence of Hispanics. It should also pay special attention to the issue of Puerto Rico, an American territory that is essentially 100 percent Hispanic, home to 3.4 million natural-born American citizens and the homeland of over 3 million voters residing in the mainland.

The contributions that Hispanic-Americans (including the American citizens from Puerto Rico) can make to the nation will depend on the growth of their communities, and more importantly, on their participation in the political processes. This has been the historical trajectory of all groups of voters who have gradually gained suffrage since the U.S. was founded. President George Washington was actually elected by only 6 percent of the population, because in his day the only people allowed to vote were white, Anglo-Saxon, land-owning men. Eventually, voting rights were extended to all white men. Later, African

PHOTO: BY RUDY CARDOSO - IMG_7743 / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS CC BY 2.0

Protesters rally for victims of Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico’s lack of voting status in Long Beach, Calif., on Oct. 3, 2017.

“

The contributions that Hispanic-Americans (including the American citizens from Puerto Rico) can make to the nation will depend on the growth of their communities, and more importantly, on their participation in the political processes.

PEDRO ROSSELLÓ, former governor of Puerto Rico

Americans were allowed to vote, although this group faced constant discrimination for nearly a century at local and state voting booths. And it was not until 1920 that women won suffrage. American democracy progressed as a growing number of its citizens were allowed full participation in the civic and political processes that influenced their lives.

However, the process of perfecting our American democracy is far from over, and Puerto Rico is a prime example. The island has spent 120 years as an American territory without a voting member in the Congress that enacts the laws that rule over the lives of its citizens — and these American citizens are unable to vote for the president that sends their sons and daughters to war.

Even more questionable is the kind of voting apartheid that Puerto Rico endures. If an American citizen from the island moves to any of the 50 states, they automatically gain full voting rights and full representation in Congress. However, if an American citizen from any of the 50 states moves to Puerto Rico, that citizen losses all the voting rights they had while residing on the mainland. They cannot even vote in the national elections via absentee ballot while living in Puerto Rico. But if that same

”

citizen decides to move to Cuba or Afghanistan, they can request an absentee ballot and exercise their full democratic right to vote. In short, the U.S. has 3.4 million citizens living under the American flag who are not allowed to enjoy the very same powers and rights that their fellow American citizens on the continental U.S. enjoy.

How can the beacon of democracy throughout the world allow such denial of civil rights to its own citizens, when this type of discrimination has been adamantly rejected by the American public and the international community? The significance of Puerto Rico’s suffrage exclusion extends beyond its shores because it is an issue of national importance, pertinent to the very essence of America’s democracy.

It is time to include Puerto Rico in the national agenda, regarding not only Hispanics, but also all our American brethren who will benefit from a more diverse society that vows equality for all citizens, regardless of where they may reside on American soil.

It is time to take care of this unfinished business of democracy in the national agenda. WD Pedro Rosselló is a two-term former governor of Puerto Rico (1993-2001). He serves as chairman of the Puerto Rico Shadow Congressional Delegation.

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 21

Tunisia CONTINUED • PAGE 20

There isn’t yet a clear indication of what form decentralization will take, but if the final result will be an extreme swing away from centralized government, that brings up its own problems.

“There is a tendency among most political and social actors to go to a large decentralized model, which means more powers for the municipal councils,” said Abouaoun. “My fear, shared with other international organizations, is if the level of decentralization is too great and the government is not able to work on an accountability and transparency framework in parallel with the decentralization law, then the effect of the law will be counterproductive.”

He recommends that moving forward, the government also tackle corruption, which was a major grievance against the Ben Ali regime.

Prime Minister Youssef Chahed has spearheaded an anti-corruption campaign that has led to arrests and investigations of businessmen and government officials, but this top-down approach will not necessarily translate into anti-corruption practices at the local level.

“The opportunities that decentralization and local elections bring are about bringing democracy and decision making closer to the people, but the risks are that flaws in the system — corruption and patronage — get replicated at the local level,” said Sabina Henneberg, a Ph.D. candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, at the MEI event.

THE CANDIDATE FIELD At the moment, the horse race of the municipal elections is unpredictable, and that’s because a slew of candidates ranging from established political players to independents are all in the running. Tunisians who have not been traditionally part of politics are eager to get in the game, aided by the new election law that mandates inclusiveness in the electoral candidate field. That includes a large number of young people.

There are 2,173 lists of candidates vying for 7,287 seats in 350 municipalities, said Paul Salem, senior vice president for policy research and programs at MEI, at the panel. More than 75 percent of candidates are under the age of 45; 50 percent are under 35; 47.5 percent are women; and there are more than 1,800 candidates with special

PHOTO: PIXABAY / STRECOSA

A Tunisian flag hangs above the doorway of a home.

PHOTO: PIXABAY / RUDY AND PETER SKITTERIANS

Above, spices are for sale in a Tunisian market. Economic frustrations sparked the country’s mass uprising in 2011, and while Tunisia ushered in a functional democracy unlike some of its Arab Spring compatriots, the lack of economic progress continues to fuel anger.

PHOTO: PIXABAY / CLAUDIA SONNEMANS

PHOTO: PIXABAY / VERONICA111886

Tunisia is known for its progressive culture and beautiful beaches that attract foreign tourists, but wide income disparities remain between the coastal cities and more remote, interior regions.

needs, he added.

The impetus for the revolution in 2011 was an overwhelming disenchantment with the old regime, where people outside of politics felt they had no say in how government affects their daily lives or their economic prospects. The municipal elections will be a grassroots approach to give marginalized people a chance to participate in local government, which is the base of a democracy.

“You cannot talk about democratization of the country without talking of local governance,” said Ambassador Gouia at the panel. “It is essential to decentralize, to give power to people to exercise their rights in terms of determining their future and the future of their regions and communities and localities.”

Young people are especially keen to get involved in government, which is not surprising given the size and grievances of Tunisia’s youth — more than 60 percent of the population is under the age of 30. While generally well educated, Tunisia’s young people face bleak job prospects and that in turn is driving some to leave the country or turn to radical

22 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

Islam.

Officials hope municipal elections provide an outlet for frustrated youth and will be a good training ground for political novices, especially given that only 3 percent of Tunisians under the age of 30 are currently members of political parties, according to FTDES, a Tunisian nongovernment organization and research center.

These elections will serve as “an outlet for civic engagement, building up political leadership, getting people involved,” said Elissa Miller, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. “It’s important for Tunisian youth who want to be in politics. They can develop a new political class able to compete with entrenched elitist parties.”

THE ECONOMY As a middle-income country, Tunisia has shown disappointing economic growth.

The terrorist attacks on tourists in 2015 kept would-be travelers away from Tunisia’s popular beaches, although Gouia noted that the number of visitors is expected to re-

turn to the level it was before the 2011 revolution.

But economic growth has been anemic and not enough to meet the high expectations that the 2011 revolution inspired. In 2015, the economy only grew by 1.1 percent and by 1 percent in 2016. It grew by 1.8 percent in the first half of 2017. What little growth there was came mostly from the services and agricultural sectors. Inflation rose to 5.6 percent year over year in July 2017, with core inflation (excluding food and energy items) rising to 6.7 percent.

One of the catalysts of the 2011 revolution was severe youth unemployment. That year, the youth unemployment rate for those in the 15-to-24 age bracket was 42.6 percent. In 2017, it was 35.4 percent, according to the World Bank. There are also huge income disparities between the coastal cities and more remote, interior regions.

Tunisia sought help from the International Monetary Fund to address its economic problems, which has resulted in unpopular austerity measures.

According to a statement from the IMF Executive

Board: “Successful fiscal adjustment will require strong policy implementation. It will be critical to increase tax revenue in an equitable manner and rein in current spending to reduce debt and increase investment and social expenditure. The 2018 priorities are to strengthen tax collection, implement the voluntary separations for civil servants, not grant new wage increases unless growth surprises on the upside, and enact quarterly fuel price hikes,” it said, noting that the Central Bank of Tunisia may need to further hike interest rates if inflation spikes.

While Tunisian officials say the painful austerity reforms are necessary to consolidate growth and build up the private sector, many average residents say the measures are tone-deaf to the millions of Tunisians struggling to get by. Inflation has been eating away at people’s earnings, and the increase in sales tax on things like cars, phone calls, the internet and gas will hit the poor the hardest.

Yet the protests against the austerity measures at least show that Tunisians face a far less oppressive environment

than they did under the Ben Ali dictatorship. It will be a long process to get the economy on track, and it will not be without popular backlash, as the protests in January showed, but at least the seeds of democracy appear to be taking root.

A SUCCESS STORY? Some observers of Tunisia have been quick to call the country a democratic success story, but that call may be premature. It has only been seven years since the revolution, and building democratic government takes many years. It will not happen with the upcoming municipal elections, or with the 2019 parliamentary and presidential elections.

What is evident is that Tunisians have generally embraced the concept of democracy, with ordinary citizens wanting to hold their government accountable and even participate in politics themselves. The decentralization law currently being debated will further cement the democratic gains. There is no question whether it will be passed — the government has been focused on building political consensus — so the question now is what form decentralization will take.

“Successful democracy is a relative concept, even in the U.S.,” said Abouaoun. “So far, Tunisians have proved to be attached to the model of democracy. Even the Islamist party in Tunisia has embraced a more or less liberal constitution.”

He predicts there will be no major disruptions to the upcoming elections because while Tunisians are keen on having an open political debate, they do not wish to see violence — or a return to the authoritarianism of the past.

“If you take all these ingredients, the chances for success are quite high,” Abouaoun said of Tunisia’s transition to democracy. “Ensuring the success will be the challenge at some point.” WD Aileen Torres-Bennett is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Education A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

•

May 2018

Leaning In Early

PHOTO: GW WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

Around 80 students from The George Washington University’s Women Leadership Program recently attended a symposium featuring four women ambassadors discussing their careers.

Women Ambassadors Advise Students on Getting Ahead ‘In Man’s World’ •

T

he #MeToo movement has raised awareness of how pervasive gender inequality is around the world, while persistent allegations of infidelity and sexual harassment swirling around President Trump have raised red flags among many women voters.

Both have galvanized women to speak up about abuse and make their voices heard in the political arena.

Despite the revival of women’s rights in the national discourse, women still face significant hurdles in getting ahead in a man’s world — whether it comes to Hollywood,

BY AUSTIN MISTRETTA

diplomacy or the White House.

As bumpy as the path toward equality continues to be for many women, it can be even more daunting for students looking to enter male-dominated careers.

SEE WOMEN • PAGE 24

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 23

Women CONTINUED • PAGE 23

That’s why role models who can offer advice and support are especially critical for young women hoping to climb the career ladder and eventually reach — and perhaps finally shatter — the proverbial glass ceiling.

On a quiet spring evening in Northwest D.C., about 80 young women, most of them undergraduate students at The George Washington University, converged at GWU’s satellite campus on Foxhall Road to get a lesson in female leadership and camaraderie.

Dressed for business in blazers and blouses, they filed into Ames Hall chatting amiably. A tinge of nervous excitement crept into their voices as they made their way downstairs, where four female ambassadors were waiting to meet them — not an everyday sight, even in Washington. The occasion was a March 29 symposium hosted by the Women Leadership Program (WLP), a selective, yearlong living and learning program for freshmen women of any school at the George Washington University.

The hour-long panel featured Ambassadors Maguy Maccario Doyle of Monaco; Hunaina Sultan Ahmed Al

PHOTO: GW WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

Ambassador of St. Kitts and Nevis Thelma Phillip-Browne, who ran for office in her Caribbean homeland, said women in politics are often held to higher standards than their male counterparts.

Mughairy of Oman; Mathilde Mukantabana of Rwanda; and Thelma Phillip-Browne of St. Kitts and Nevis, each of whom shared the common challenges and distinct experiences that marked their professional journeys.

“Women should lean in, so I will lean in,” moderator Tara Sonenshine began as she adjusted the microphone on the podium in front of her, eliciting a round of raucous applause.

Sonenshine is something of an authority on the subject of “leaning in.”

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She served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs under the Obama administration, worked as an advisor for President Clinton and won 10 Emmys and other journalism awards for programs on domestic and international issues.

Yet Sonenshine remains the exception, not the rule, in terms of women occupying the upper echelons of power, especially in politics and diplomacy. In 2016, the Pew Research Center conducted a study of American Foreign Service data and found that only

9 percent of U.S. ambassadors who have served in foreign nations have been female. That is less than 500 out of approximately 4,600 American diplomats.

The numbers for women in U.S. politics are equally lopsided.

According to the Women & Politics Institute at American University, the U.S. still ranks 90th in the world in the percentage of women serving in national legislatures. When the 113th Congress convened in January 2013, 82 percent of its members were men.

Three-quarters of statewide elected officials and state legislators are men.

Men also occupy the governor’s mansion in 44 of the 50 states, and they run City Hall in 87 of the 100 largest cities across the country. Moreover, in every U.S. state, men earn more than women.

But the tide may be gradually shifting, partly in response to factors such as the global #MeToo movement, the loss of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and the growing backlash against Trump and the various allegations that have dogged his presidency.

According to an April 6 article in The New York Times by Jonathan Martin and Denise Lu, Trump may in fact be serving as a recruitment tool for Democratic candidates. “Notably, there are even more Democrats running for the House this year than there were Republican hopefuls in 2010, when the Tea Party uprising

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[T]here’s always a glass ceiling somewhere.

HUNAINA SULTAN AHMED AL MUGHAIRY ambassador of Oman to the United States

”

against Mr. Obama helped sweep in 63 new House Republicans,” they wrote.

This surge is being driven largely by women, with a historic 30 percent of female candidates on the House Democratic ballot. And according to a recent analysis by the Associated Press, a total of 309 women from both major parties filed candidacy papers to run for the House. That tops the previous record of 298 in 2012.

Likewise, while diplomacy remains an overwhelmingly male-dominated field, women have made significant strides toward closing the profession’s gender gap, especially over the last decade. During the Obama years, about a third of all diplomatic appointments were women; that figure has remained steady under Trump.

It was on that note that Sonenshine directed the audience’s attention to the panelists, who spoke about their professional and personal lives, and the relative strengths and struggles of women in diplomacy. Ironically, none of the women started off wanting to become diplomats. Maccario Doyle began her career promoting tourism in New York, where she eventually became her country’s consul general. Al Mughairy was an economist by training whose husband served as Oman’s ambassador to the United Nations. Mukantabana was a refugee whose life was irrevocably changed by the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Yet all of the women have used their unique backgrounds to inform their work as diplomats, while overcoming many of the common obstacles that women from all walks of life face.

OVERCOMING THE ODDS

PHOTO: GW WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

Ambassador of Oman Hunaina Sultan Ahmed Al Mughairy was an economist by training before becoming her country’s envoy to the U.S.

THE POWER OF RISE.

The ambassadors cited gender as the biggest obstacle they’ve encountered on their respective career paths. The women all agreed that the historical norms restricting women from taking on leadership roles persist to this day.

For example, Phillip-Browne argued that women face a higher degree of SEE WOMEN • PAGE 26

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Women CONTINUED • PAGE 25

scrutiny and are held to higher standards than their male counterparts.

“I put a question to some ladies: Would you vote for a woman? And they say to me, ‘Well, if she is qualified.’ You won’t say that about a man,” she pointed out. Phillip-Browne, a former dermatologist who herself ran for an assembly seat in her Caribbean homeland in 2004, said that any woman seeking a position of power “will have been examined and questioned” in ways that men generally are not.

For instance, women seeking political office must often walk a fine line between coming off as passionate, but not emotional; assertive but not aggressive; knowledgeable but not know-it-alls; approachable and feminine, but not in any overtly sexual way. Pundits and the media still routinely comment on female candidates’ married lives, whether they have children, whether they smile enough in public appearances and their choice of clothing — descriptions that rarely apply to men.

The uneven application of standards, according to Phillip-Browne, makes it difficult for women to pass muster and move forward in their careers.

PHOTO: GW WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

Ambassador of Monaco Maguy Maccario Doyle told female students to “be strong and have faith in yourself.”

Al Mughairy likewise warned the students that “there’s always a glass ceiling somewhere,” oftentimes imperceptible until one collides with it.

Indeed, Embassy Row appears be trapped under a glass ceiling of its own. At present, only 21 out of the 177 foreign delegations headquartered in Washington have female ambassadors; the highest that number has ever reached was 27, back in 2013.

Researchers at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security have attributed that brief spike to the “Hillary effect,” referring to a trend among foreign governments to send

over more female diplomats when a woman is in charge at the State Department. Only time will tell whether the record will hold or shatter.

Since it is still so rare for women to make it to the top of the diplomatic field, the ambassadors at the GWU panel emphasized the importance of community and how crucial a solid support system was to their success.

According to Maccario Doyle, a strong role model can be instrumental in setting a person on the right track.

She reminisced about her conversations with Grace Kelly — the former actress turned Monaco’s American-

born princess — who once told her: “Maggie, just keep focused on where it is you want to go.” Maccario Doyle said the princess’s advice guided her “throughout my career,” which included a stint as head of the Monaco Tourism Board in North America, where her biggest project was a series of events in 2007 celebrating the life of Princess Grace, who gave up her career as a Hollywood icon to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco, raising money for the Princess Grace Foundation-USA. Phillip-Browne also noted that men are key allies in the fight for gender parity, and she encouraged young women to work in concert, not in competition, with one another. Women, she added, are particularly wellsuited for the kind of collaboration that diplomatic work entails.

“All of us are diplomats, and especially women,” she said. “If you look at the definition of diplomacy, we’re really messengers, taking the message from our country to another country in a sensitive way, in a way that is receptive, and palatable and diplomatic.

Who better to do that than women?”

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has not yet elected a female head of ters, two brothers, six aunts, four uncles state. According to the Georgetown and all of her nieces and nephews. In Institute for Women, Peace and Seresponse, Mukantabana started a social curity, women’s share of legislative work program at the National University seats in the U.S. amounts to just 19 of Rwanda, training people who continue percent, compared to 56 percent in to help survivors deal with the aftermath Rwanda. of genocide.

Yet even seemingly progressive “Having amnesia doesn’t help,” she said. countries deal with pervasive mi“Remembering the past is important.” sogyny. Nordic countries, for inAbove all, the ambassadors encourstance, are world-renowned as pioaged the young women to build on the neers of gender equality. Sweden in progress of the last generation. Maccario particular developed the world’s first Doyle urged them to “set your target right (and only) “feminist” foreign policy; at the top and don’t let anything dissuade roughly half of the diplomatic corps you from getting there…. Be strong and is split between women and men; have faith in yourself.” and it boasts a long tradition of Many in the audience stayed behind government policies such as generto talk to the ambassadors, who were eaous parental leave that have made it ger to keep up the conversation. “Events a trailblazer in promoting women’s like this expand and alter our students’ rights. horizons and perspectives,” said Mary Yet #MeToo revealed that women Buckley, an associate professor of dance still face an uphill struggle in counat GWU and a director in the Women’s PHOTO: GW WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP PROGRAM tries like Sweden, where the moveLeadership Program. “It offers our young ment spawned a wave of viral cam- Ambassador of Rwanda Mathilde Mukantabana, left, reflected on her experiences during the 1994 women leaders inspiration, and it models Rwandan Genocide, which killed both her parents, three sisters, two brothers, six aunts, four uncles paigns detailing rampant stories of and all of her nieces and nephews. the possibilities that exist for them as they rape and harassment in virtually all navigate the professional world.” sectors of society, from politics to sports to academia (also see “Hailed as Champion of The discussion was part of WLP’s ongoing efforts to offers its students the benefit Gender Equality, Sweden Learns It Still Has Some Catching Up to Do” in the February of small classes, close contact with faculty and women in leadership roles, and strong 2018 issue of The Washington Diplomat). community ties.

What is important, according to Rwanda’s Mukantabana, is that “there has been “In this day and age, it’s especially important for us to foster leadership skills in progress.” women as they climb the ranks and break the glass ceiling,” WLP student Clara ChahShe explained that systemic change is “a journey you take for generations.” It’s a wan told The Diplomat. “It’s especially important for us to recognize that there are personal observation for Mukantabana, whose nation has spent the past three decades barriers for women in leadership and have programs set up to fight those obstacles recovering from the brutal genocide it endured in 1994. and to navigate them. And I think that’s especially important because it helps us grow Mukantabana, a member of the Tutsi ethnic group, began teaching history at Co- as people, and as leaders, and as daughters, and mothers and anything that we’re going sumnes River College in Sacramento in 1994 just as hundreds of thousands of Tutsi to do in the future.” WD were massacred by members of the Hutu majority. The same week that she was hired by the college, she learned that among those killed were both her parents, three sis- Austin Mistretta is an editorial intern for The Washington Diplomat.

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WD | Education | Sports

PHOTOS: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

Friendly Competition?

Sports Diplomacy: Is It Just ‘War Minus the Shooting’ or More? •

A

BY KARIN ZEITVOGEL

The State Department regularly sponsors sports diplomacy-related events.

Above, the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria plays the British High Commission in a match on May 28, 2010, in South Africa as part of a series of events aimed at building a friendly rivalry ahead of the 2010 World Cup. Below, the U.S. Men’s National Volleyball Team plays the Iranian Men’s National Volleyball Team in the first of four friendly matches in Los Angeles on Aug. 9, 2014.

t the start of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, it was not sporting prowess, but sports diplomacy, that stole the show. North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, became the first member of the family dynasty that rules the northern half of the Korean Peninsula to visit the southern half since the Korean War ended with a truce in 1953.

Kim more or less stole the limelight from athletes in the early events — who remembers which country won men’s or women’s ski jumping, or that a Russian athlete won a medal, even though Russia wasn’t officially at the games?

Dubbed “North Korea’s Ivanka,” she appeared in pictures with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and invited him to the North, and completely blanked U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

More controversially, North Korea’s former spymaster, Kim Yong-chol, led Pyongyang’s Olympic delegation, even though he’s accused of orchestrating a deadly attack on a South Korean warship in 2010. Many foreign policy pundits — and South Koreans — derided the North’s charm offensive as, well, offensive, given the existential threat the Hermit Kingdom poses not only to its neighbor, but to the world.

They also questioned the power of so-called sports diplomacy to solve a decades-old dispute that has bedeviled countless heads of state.

“I don’t think it means anything diplomatically. I can’t see the agreements with North and South Korea having any long-term effect. There 28 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

is certainly a good measure of symbolism, but that is not going to change much,” said Jonathan Grix, editor in chief of the International Journal of Sport Policy, in a Feb. 6 interview with Eleanor Albert of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Will taekwondo achieve what diplomacy hasn’t?” asked Krishnadev Calamur in a Jan. 9 article for The Atlantic, arguing that the record on sports diplomacy is spotty. “[A]ny soccer hooligan will tell you that sports could just as well stoke tensions as defuse them.”

In a Jan. 22 op-ed for The Washington Post, sports management professor Heather Dichter similarly warned: “The antagonism between the two Koreas … along with the difficulties in previous Olympic negotiations, suggests that observers should temper their expectations. Sport can go only so far in diplomacy.”

Yet a month after the Olympics began, South Korea’s national security advisor, Chung Euiyong, stood on the lawn of the White House and made the dramatic announcement that Kim Jong-un had asked to meet with President Trump — and that Trump accepted. No one

really knows if the historic breakthrough was inspired by the Olympic détente, President Moon’s outreach, Chinese pressure, the White House’s threats of a “bloody nose” strike, Trump’s verbal taunts or, more likely, the bite of economic sanctions. Regardless, the June meeting — assuming it happens — will be the biggest foreign policy gambit of Trump’s presidency and — assuming it isn’t a disaster — a victory for Moon’s decision to invite the North to the Games.

Sports diplomacy is defined by Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs as “the intentional use of sporting events and people to undertake representative or diplomatic activities by government.”

Stuart Murray, an associate professor at Bond University in Australia, whose research interests include sports diplomacy, defines it as the practice of using “sports people and sporting events to engage, inform, and create a favour-

ALSO SEE: Where to Study Sports Diplomacy PAGE 30

able image amongst foreign publics and organisations to shape their perceptions in a way that is more conducive to achieving a government’s foreign policy goals.”

Murray notes several reasons why governments turn to sports diplomacy, including that it is “a proactive, original, and pioneering form of engagement that illustrates to the public at home and abroad that a state’s diplomacy is no longer elite, aloof, and out-of-date.” Another reason he cites (he lists 7 in total in a 2012 article published in the Diplomacy and Statecraft journal) is that “estranged states can use sport as a way of exploring the normalisation of diplomatic relations.” Think PingPong diplomacy, which, in 1971, saw the U.S. Ping-Pong team become the first official U.S. delegation in more than 20 years to set foot in China, paving the way for renewed dialogue between Beijing and Washington and for President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972.

Kim Yo-jong’s presence in Pyeongchang, along with that of North Korean athletes, a very large cheering squad and performance artists, had been decided on at talks between the North and South in early January. Those talks were rapidly put together after Kim Jong-un suggested in his New Year’s speech that the North should be allowed to send a team to compete in the Olympics. A month later, North and South Korean athletes marched under one flag at the opening ceremony, and women from the North suited up with their South Korean counterparts as part of a mixed country team for women’s ice hockey. They got trounced by Switzerland in their first outing, but the match was probably the most talked-about event in the early days of the Games.

This was seen as something of a coup for sports diplomacy, especially in light of the fact that the North had a much different reaction in 1988, when the South hosted the Seoul Summer Games. Pyongyang, then ruled by Kim Il-sung, the current Kim’s granddad, wanted to co-host the Olympics with the South, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was only willing to give the North a couple of events, not a full-on partnership. With their demand rejected, they first tried to convince allies — the U.S.S.R., East European nations, Cuba and China — to boycott the games. But after that request was snubbed (except by Cuba), the North blew up a Korean Air passenger plane, killing more than 100 people, reportedly in an attempt to destabilize Seoul ahead of the Games and scare off participants.

Likewise, the Pyeongchang Games took place against a backdrop of sky-high tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Last year, the North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test and ballistic missile launches theoretically capable of striking the U.S. mainland. In the past, North Korea’s boasts that it could put nuclear warheads on those missiles and lob them at the United States were largely dismissed as hyperbole. Now, many experts concede that the North could be months ago from mastering that technological feat.

Given these heightened tensions, there were legitimate fears that North Korea might try to disrupt the Pyeongchang Olympics. Instead, the Games went off

PHOTO: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

Above, a pitcher from the Cuban National Baseball Team throws the ball to a member of the Tampa Bay Rays as the two teams stage an exhibition game in Havana, Cuba, on March 22, 2016, before an audience that included then-Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro. At left, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and South Korean President Moon Jae-in attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, where North Korea and South Korea competed under the same flag.

“

PHOTO: IOC / DAN MULLAN

If precedent is anything to go by, the peace and unity shown at the Games in February will end now that the Olympic flame in Pyeongchang has been extinguished.

without a hitch and Kim Jong-un is reportedly prepared to talk about denuclearization while dropping demands that the U.S. and South Korea freeze military exercises during the negotiations.

Yet the naysayers — of both the upcoming Trump-Kim summit and of sports diplomacy in general — are right to be wary. Since the 1990s, Pyongyang has perpetually broken promises to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for security assurances and aid. Many experts warn it is highly unlikely that Kim would ever give up the nuclear arsenal he views as key to his regime’s survival — at least not without assurances that would be nearly impossible for the U.S. to stomach, such as pulling U.S. troops out of the region and removing America’s nuclear umbrella over South Korea and Japan. On the flip side, Kim will be confronting a volatile U.S. president with scant knowledge of the complexities of the Korean nuclear standoff, along with two hawkish new advisors — National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — both of whom have supported regime change in the past.

The expected meeting is also not nec-

”

essarily a vindication of sports diplomacy, which has a mixed track record. If precedent is anything to go by, the peace and unity shown at the Games in February will end now that the Olympic flame in Pyeongchang has been extinguished.

Even in ancient times, when the Olympic truce was established in 9th century B.C. Greece, it was only a temporary thing, intended to allow athletes and spectators to travel safely to the town where the games were being held and then return home without getting killed by someone from the other side in whatever war was going on. Once the games were over and they were all back home, the truce was over and fighting resumed.

In modern times, the IOC appealed in 1992 for the Olympic truce to be observed to allow athletes from the former Yugoslavia to participate in the Barcelona Games.

Fighting in Yugoslavia continued for years after the Olympics. In 1996, when the Summer Games were held in Atlanta, Norwegian speed skater Johann Olav Koss teamed up with UNICEF to lead a global campaign to raise money for children growing up in countries at war. The effort raised $15 million and in the process,

UNICEF brokered a ceasefire between the warring sides in Afghanistan to coincide with the 1996 Olympics. But it was broken five days into the Games, when the Taliban launched a rocket attack on the Afghan capital of Kabul. And weeks after the Atlanta Games ended, the Taliban swept into power, which they held until 2001.

As Calamur pointed out in The Atlantic, “countries continue to rely on sports as a diplomatic tool, with limited success.”

India and Pakistan have used cricket to bring the two adversaries closer together, but in the wake of deteriorating relations, the two sides now rarely play against one another.

“The U.S. and Iran are another example.

The Bush administration sent a team of American wrestlers to Iran in 1998 where they were warmly welcomed. Sporting exchanges continued through the Obama years — but relations between the Trump administration and Iran’s regime in Tehran are tense, and after Iranians were placed on the president’s travel ban, the Islamic republic denied visas to U.S. wrestlers,” Calamur wrote.

He noted that sports “can also effectively serve as a showcase for often ugly nationalism,” citing the example of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and Palestinian militants who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

To British author George Orwell, sports and diplomacy are like oil and water. Orwell once called sports “war minus the shooting” and, according to an article in Sport in History by Kingston University emeritus professor Peter J. Beck, Orwell regarded international sport as “one of the most visible peacetime manifestations of nationalism, a divisive force within and between countries.”

In his Council on Foreign Relations interview, Jonathan Grix, a professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, agrees that nationalism is an ugly side of sports.

SEE SPORTS • PAGE 30

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 29

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“Take 1956, when the Soviets effectively invaded Hungary. At the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, there was a famous water polo match in the semifinals round between Hungary and the Soviet Union where there was blood in the water during the violent competition. The match mirrored what was going on in the real world in sport,” he said in the CFR brief. “For some, sport like this is simply ‘war by other means’; for others, sporting rivalry is preferable to real-world conflicts.”

Another way that sports can impact international affairs is simply by elevating a country’s profile. Grix cites mega sporting events such as Brazil’s 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics; Russia’s 2014 Sochi Games and its upcoming 2018 World Cup; China’s 2008 Beijing Games and upcoming 2022 Winter Games; and Qatar’s 2022 World Cup. But the verdict is still out on whether these ambitious endeavors can actually change global perceptions of the (oftentimes-autocratic) governments behind them, or whether they amount to a massive sinkhole of wasted money, corruption and bad press.

Nevertheless, the United States still ostensibly believes in the power of sport to influence politics. The State Department hails sports diplomacy as “an integral part of efforts to build ever-strengthening relations between the United States and other nations” that transcends linguistic and sociocultural differences.

And the U.S. is indeed active in sports diplomacy — even if Pence and Kim-thesister studiously avoided making eye contact 30 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

S

PHOTO: U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

President Nixon attends the historic match between the U.S. and Chinese Ping-Pong teams in Beijing in 1971, which paved the way for renewed dialogue between Beijing and Washington and for President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972.

in Pyeongchang. After World War II, the United States and Japan engaged in baseball games that inspired a long tradition of baseball in Japan. Sportsmen from Iran and the U.S. met on the soccer field at the 1998 World Cup in an example of football diplomacy. And long before President Barack Obama re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba, the communist island’s national baseball team played two exhibition games against the Baltimore Orioles — one in Maryland and the other in Havana.

Today, the State Department supports initiatives and clinics in places ranging from Costa Rica to Mozambique, many with an emphasis on diversity, gender equality and youth engagement. The State Department has deployed famous athletes such as fig-

ure skater Michelle Kwan, baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. and basketball star Shaquille O’Neal to countries such as Russia, China, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Ukraine and Lebanon.

While such efforts may benefit children in underserved communities, their overall impact is difficult to gauge. As for larger sporting events such as the Olympics, the symbolism of bringing archenemies together makes headlines, but none has fundamentally changed relations between the two countries involved, other than the time spent on the field, the slopes, the ice, the mats or the pitch. WD Karin Zeitvogel (@Zeitvogel) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

everal universities around the world offer majors, minors, courses or master’s degrees in sports diplomacy.

On the doorstep of Washington, D.C., George Mason University in Virginia offers an undergraduate minor in Sport and Conflict Resolution, which helps prepare students to work for organizations dedicated to using sports for development, community building and peace. Undergraduates who choose the minor take courses in sports management and conflict resolution.

The University of the West of Scotland has partnered with the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin to offer a one-year master of arts degree in cultural diplomacy and international sport. Students spend one semester in Paisley, Scotland, and the other in Berlin, where they are taught strategies, policies and practices for advancing cultural diplomacy, and how to apply these to different circumstances. Students can choose to specialize in either sports or music as diplomatic tools.

The International University of Monaco (Prince Albert’s wife is former South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock) offers a master’s degree in sustainable peace through sport. The multidisciplinary program seeks to educate and train graduate students to harness the potential of sport for building and promoting sustainable peace across the globe. Classes are online and at the IUM in Monaco.

“Sport and Diplomacy: ‘More than a Game’” at the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS University of London is open to graduate students and “aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of how sports and international sporting institutions function as non-state actors in diplomacy.”

— Karin Zeitvogel

Medical A Special Section of The Washington Diplomat

•

May 2018

PHOTO: AFRICA STUDIO / SHUTTERSTOCK

Lung Cancer Breakthrough New Drugs Designed to Trigger Immune Systems May Be Big Advance in Lung Cancer Care •

D

rugs designed to trigger a patient’s immune system may help boost survival for those battling lung cancer, two new studies found.

The first study showed that when the immunotherapy drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab) was combined with standard chemotherapy, the chance that a patient would die within the

BY ALAN MOZES

next 11 months plummeted by more than 50 percent, compared with being treated with chemo alone.

SEE LUNG CANCER • PAGE 32

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 31

Lung Cancer CONTINUED • PAGE 31

What is immunotherapy?

Immunotherapy for cancer, sometimes called immune-oncology, is a type of medicine that treats cancer using the body’s own immune system.

Your immune system protects you from harmful agents like bacteria and viruses. When it is working well, it attacks what shouldn’t be in your body.

The immune system also does a good job of keeping your body from attacking things that should be there. Immunotherapy drugs for lung cancer help your body recognize the cancer as foreign and harmful so your body can fight it.

— American Lung Association

The combination treatment also drove down the risk that the cancer would spread by nearly as much, added the research team from NYU Langone Health in New York City.

In a similar vein, another team of researchers gave patients diagnosed with advanced lung cancer either a combination of the immunotherapy drugs Opdivo (nivolumab) and Yervoy (ipilimumab), or standard chemotherapy. Those on the two immunotherapy drugs were 42 percent less likely to see their Cancer cell Inhibitor T cell disease progress after a year.

Taken together, the two findings offer an encouraging note in an effort to improve the odds against what is the leading cause of cancer-related death, experts said.

“Chemotherapy remains the standard of care for the majority of [lung cancer] patients, and is a very poor standard,” explained Dr. Leena Gandhi, lead author of the NYU LanPD-L1 PD-1 gone study. In most cases, she said, chemo prolongs life by just a year or even less.

GRAPHIC: AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION / LUNG.ORG/IMMUNOTHERAPY But the combination approach “resulted in a marked imtruda and chemotherapy. The remaining third was treated with chemoprovement in response, progression-free survival and overall therapy alone. survival in all patients,” she said.

People taking Keytruda did have more side effects — in fact, nearly Gandhi is director of Langone’s Thoracic Medical Oncology Program at the Perlmutter Cancer Center. The second study was led by Dr. Mat- 14 percent of those who received the drug dropped out of the trial due thew Hellmann, assistant attending at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer to side effects, compared to about 8 percent of those who didn’t get Keytruda. Also, the Keytruda group faced a significantly higher (though still Center in New York City.

NOTE: Although every effort is made assure your adtheir is free of mistakes andfor content is ultimately up to the customer to make the final proof. percent) risk kidney ittrouble.

The researchers involved in bothto studies presented findings last justin5 spelling But compared with those theof chemo-only group, alteration. those in the Signed com- ads are considered approved. at anwill American Association for Cancer meeting in Chi- changes The first two faxed month changes be made at no cost to the Research advertiser, subsequent will be billed at a in rate $75 per faxed cago last month. The studies were also published simultaneously in the bination group saw their chances increase for overall survival and for halting Mark the progression of their disease.

New England Journal of Medicine.

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Hellmann’s group followed 299 patients with advanced lung cancer for Gandhi’s team enlisted more than 600 lung cancer patients from over If the ad is correct 118 signtreatment and fax centers to: (301) 949-0065 needsthechanges close to a year. One group was given immunotherapy drugs Opdivo around the world.

Of these, roughly two-thirds was randomly assigned to receive Key- and Yervoy, while the other received chemo.

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“

Chemotherapy remains the standard of care for the majority of [lung cancer] patients, and is a very poor standard.

What is

”

n e ?

Lung cancer is cancer that starts in the lungs. When a person has lung cancer, they have abnormal cells that cluster together to form a tumor.

Unlike normal cells, cancer cells grow without order or control, destroying the healthy lung tissue around them. These types of tumors are called malignant tumors. When the cancer cells spread, they prevent organs of the body from functioning properly.

DR. LEENA GANDHI

director of NYU Langone Health’s Thoracic Medical Oncology Program

“Patients who received the immunotherapy combination were 42 percent less likely to have their disease progress,” Hellmann said in a statement.

As for costs, Gandhi said combination drug therapy (approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2017) is more expensive than chemo alone.

But she suggested that the added expense should be weighed against “the magnitude of the benefit.”

Dr. Norman Edelman, senior medical advisor for the American Lung Association, said both findings are a step forward, given that “until very recently the treatment of lung cancer has been dismal.”

“Because most lung cancer is detected after it’s already spread, we get fiveyear cures in less than 20 percent of patients using chemotherapy alone,” Edelman noted.

“But recently we’ve developed drugs that are tailored to the specific genetics of a patient’s tumor,” he explained. “And that was really the first breakthrough, because it extended life for a small group of people, about 10 to 15 percent.

“But what’s exciting about these two immune system therapies is that the researchers didn’t limit themselves to just specific genetic variations [in patients],” Edelman said.

“The first study went for all the patients, and the second study also focused on a much larger group of patients.

And both found that their approachLEARN MORE: The American Cancer es offered a substantial improvement Society has more information on lung — in terms of prolonging life and reducing disease progression — to cancer at www.cancer.org/cancer/nona much larger percentage of people,” small-cell-lung-cancer/about/what-ishe explained. non-small-cell-lung-cancer.html.

“And in the case of the first study, if their findings hold up, it’s really a

n

Key Points 1 Lung cancer happens when cells in the lung change (mutate).

They grow uncontrollably and cluster together to form a tumor.

2 Lung cells most often change because they are exposed to dangerous chemicals that we breathe.

3 There are two main types of lung cancer, small cell lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. Non-small cell lung cancer is more common.

4 Lung cancer symptoms usually do not appear until the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. At this point, it is harder to treat lung cancer.

— American Lung Association GRAPHIC: AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION

substantial breakthrough, because they suggest this can be a first-line treatment,” Edelman added.

“In other words, you can use this instead of chemotherapy. Which is truly a big deal, because chemo is not terribly effective and has all kinds of side effects,” he said. WD Alan Mozes is a HealthDay reporter. Copyright © 2018 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 33

Is Healthcare Ready for Global Aging?

By Jai Verma The world is quickly approaching a population tipping point. Sometime before 2020, people who are 65 and older will surpass those under five years of age. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2050, the world’s population age 60 years and over is expected to grow by 56 percent and reach nearly 2.1 billion, up from 900 million today. In Asia, the rate of aging is on a larger scale than any other region.

People can now plan for longer, healthier, and more productive lives.

However, this trend will also put pressure on governments to increase healthcare spending and will challenge healthcare companies to find new opportunities to keep people healthy, while tackling the chronic conditions that come with aging.

Globally, chronic conditions are on the rise, especially among people in the developing world. Just take diabetes as an example. WHO estimates that the number of adults living with diabetes has almost quadrupled since 1980, moving from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. The Asia-Pacific region is generally regarded as the epicenter of the diabetes crisis. In these countries, people develop the disease earlier, get sicker, and die sooner than their counterparts in wealthier countries. If not successfully managed, chronic diseases will become the most expensive problems faced by our healthcare systems.

Governments Stepping Up

Healthcare costs are increasing as governments struggle with primary healthcare delivery for the young as well the aging. However, change is underway. Last year, China issued a five-year plan on public healthcare that vowed to handle critical disease more efficiently, including chronic disease, and do more to address the needs of its booming elderly population with new models that combine government, community, and family support. Thailand and Mexico stand out in moving toward universal coverage and insuring that the entire population has access to basic healthcare. India has announced that it will fund the world’s largest national healthcare program.

Countries are also investing millions of dollars and creating partnerships with health systems and skilled medical talent to create “destinations of excellence” for high quality and competitively priced healthcare.

Dubai, for example, is a growing center for healthcare and wellness services and expects its annual revenue from medical visitors will increase by 13 percent every year for the next five years. Another popular destination is Malaysia, where the government actively supports and promotes the country as a one-stop destination “for all your medical needs.” At Cigna, we provide solutions for our members – whether they travel for medical treatments or if they work or retire in foreign countries – through an international medical network of over one million partnerships, including 96,000 behavioral healthcare professionals and 11,400 facilities and clinics.

The Impact of Technology

Another notable trend is how technology is changing the way healthcare is delivered and received. In its Megatrend 2016 report, Ernst and Young says the next generation of smart health technology promise enormous change for aging populations.

Digital healthcare via telemedicine, mobile apps, wearable devices, social media, and robust analytics are providing solutions to rising health-

care costs. Cigna was one of the first healthcare companies to introduce a mobile app that provides expert guidance on treatment decisions, plus healthcare and well-being advice. We also enable our members to connect 24 hours, seven days a week with a board-certified doctor by phone or secure, online video chat if they are traveling or when they cannot see their primary care provider.

The shift in the way that medical information is received and consumed online has brought about a fundamental change to healthcare communications. According to the 2017 Cigna 360° Well-being Survey, 78 percent of respondents believe the use of digital technology in healthcare has the potential to bring good health to more people around the world.

Mobile healthcare and use of mobile to enable consumers to interact with hospitals, doctors, and other providers will be among the biggest developments impacting our future healthcare system.

In fact, based on our research, we know the majority – 59 percent – use, or plan to use health apps within a year. This rises to 69 percent in China, 78 percent in Indonesia, and 81 percent in India.

Digital is helping us serve our customers better where they are. Our chatbot messaging in Korea uses artificial intelligence (AI) to answer common questions and undertake simple customer service transactions.

We have entered the voice control space, launching “Answers by Cigna” for Amazon Alexa. Users can simply ask their health-related questions and receive easy-to-understand answers.

We have developed a suite of app services that are available globally as well as for individual markets. There is “Coach by Cigna” that allows people to select health and fitness coaching via more than 300 instructional and motivational videos and “Cigna Virtual Health App” that provides a virtual health team to improve health and well-being. Various markets across Asia have localized apps, such as a “Perfect Life” app in China that helps with diabetes and “Heart Hero” in Korea that offers instruction for CPR.

Brave New World

We live in an exciting world in which people are living longer than ever before. Healthcare companies, like Cigna, are working closely with governments and healthcare institutions around the world to design new and flexible solutions that provide seniors access to affordable and efficient care, wherever that may be. Still more work needs to be done. Governments must continue to work with the private sector and find ways to offer comprehensive healthcare and healthcare insurance at affordable prices for all ages.

Jai Verma is the Senior Executive Officer & Global Head of Cigna Business to Government business, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Cigna B2G segment focuses on providing healthcare coverage for diplomatic missions and government-sponsored students and people traveling for treatment around the globe.

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34 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

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Modern Oasis “Although Bahrain was once called ‘the island of 1 million palm trees,’ today many of those palm trees have been replaced with skyscrapers and retail outlets,” says Shaikha Aisha AlKhalifa, wife of the Bahraini ambassador, touting her tiny island’s transformation. / PAGE 38

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May 2018 events

D.C. ON FIRE Burning Man has become an annual tradition in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, where over 70,000 people participate in a weeklong counterculture festival showcasing “radical self-expression.”

The Renwick Gallery has staged an ambitious exhibition that celebrates the festival’s many unheralded but extremely talented artists for the first time in the nation’s capital. / PAGE 36

THEATER

Mexico on the Ropes At a time when Washington — or at least President Trump — is in a perpetual state of agitation over Mexico, Cirque du Soleil, the legendary acrobatic and theater troupe, has arrived in the region bearing nothing but love and admiration for America’s neighbor to the south. / PAGE 39

ART

East-West Collision A kaleidoscope of colors, pop culture references and traditional Asian art techniques collide in “Jiha Moon: Double Welcome, Most Everyone’s Mad Here,” an exhibition suffused with both satirical whimsy and contemporary relevance. / PAGE 40

Christopher Schardt’s “Nova” PHOTO: RON BLUNT

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 35

WD | Culture | Art

Hot Ticket ‘Burning Man’ Blazes Experimental Art Trail from Nevada Desert to D.C. •

BY BRENDAN L. SMITH

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man THROUGH JAN. 21, 2019 RENWICK GALLERY PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE AND 17TH STREET, NW

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| WWW.AMERICANART.SI.EDU/VISIT/RENWICK

I

n 1986, artists Larry Harvey and Jerry James built a rough eight-foot-tall wooden figure from scrap lumber and dragged it to Baker Beach in San Francisco, where they set it alight in a modern summer solstice ritual.

Since then, Burning Man has become an annual tradition that shifted locales to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, where it has grown to more than 70,000 participants in a weeklong counterculture festival featuring massive art installations, dance parties, lamp-lit processions and other forms of “radical selfexpression.” But the spectacle is fleeting. The various multistory experimental art installations and buildings that rise in the dust are burned to the ground, only to be built anew the following year.

The Renwick Gallery has staged an ambitious exhibition titled “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man” that celebrates the festival’s many unheralded but extremely talented artists for the first time in the nation’s capital. The size and complexity of the 14 installations required closing the entire museum for almost a month.

As the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s branch dedicated to contemporary craft, the Renwick has held several recent exhibitions that embrace unconventional artistic trends and maker subcultures such as Burning Man. Renwick Gallery curator Nora Atkinson spent two years organizing this exhibition, working with the Burning Man Project and Burning Man artists across the country.

Among the room-size installations, Marco Cochrane’s 18-foot-tall sculpture of a nude female dancer titled “Truth Is Beauty” is somehow both intimate and commanding, a feminine spirit writ large. She is balanced on tiptoes with an arched back and arms twirling skyward, almost brushing the ceiling. Crafted from stainless-steel rod, mesh and metal, the body’s metallic sheen casts an otherworldly glow. But the sculpture commissioned by the Renwick Gallery is only one-third of the size of the 55-foottall original displayed at Burning Man in 2013. An inscription at the base reads in several languages: “What Would The World Be Like If Women Were Safe?”

David Best and his Temple Crew create intricate multistory wooden temples at Burning Man that are contemplative spaces and a welcome respite from the baking desert sun and wind-blasted sand that sweeps across the “playa,” a white-clay lakebed ringed by mountains that is Burning Man’s barren but beautiful home. People often leave memorials inside the temple to loved ones they have lost, including handwritten messages, photos and mementos.

Best has transformed the largest room at the Renwick into a new temple with woodcut columns, ornately decorated walls, hanging lanterns, a 30-foot-wide chandelier and a pagoda altar featuring one large spike descending downward and another ascending upward, representing the “golden spike” used to mark the site of the Burning Man sculpture each year. Visitors can write messages on small wooden blocks and stick them into the temple walls or leave them on ledges where the blocks overflow onto the floor, expressing an anonymous mass of hopes and fears.

“Stay human.” “Keep going.” “We miss you, Dad.” The exhibition also features a collection of Burning Man patches, elaborate costumes, archival photos and a humorous collection of jars of ashes from former festivals, each labeled with their year of conflagration. Three glowing mushrooms rise more than 10 feet from the floor in “Shrumen Lumen” by the FoldHaus Art Collective. When you stand on a glowing circle, a hydraulic arm lifts the mushroom cap above you, causing it to crackle and pop like a campfire. It feels like a brief stop in Wonderland without Alice.

Christopher Schardt’s video installation titled “Nova” features a star-shaped alumi-

36 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

PHOTO: ELEANOR PREGER

Above, Marco Cochrane’s 18-foot-tall sculpture of a nude female dancer titled “Truth Is Beauty” is seen at Burning Man in Nevada and at the Renwick Gallery in D.C. At left, David Best and his Temple Crew create intricate multistory wooden temples at Burning Man that are contemplative spaces. Below, three glowing mushrooms rise more than 10 feet from the floor of the Renwick in “Shrumen Lumen” by the FoldHaus Art Collective.

PHOTOS: RON BLUNT

num LED screen suspended from the ceiling with cushions on the floor where visitors can lie down and gaze above them as if they were lying in a field staring at the sky. The video features swirling images of the cosmos, shooting stars and expanding galaxies in a mesmerizing and meditative display.

For the first time, art also is heading outside the doors of the Renwick, with six sculptures placed on downtown sidewalks and medians in a partnership with the downtown Golden Triangle Business Improvement District. Since Burning Man artwork is designed to be shown outside, these installations are a welcome addition and a fun surprise for tourists and office dwellers who will turn a corner and see two giant crows, a 14-foot-tall bear with copper fur crafted from 170,000 pennies or a bust of Maya Angelou that plays one of her poems.

Burning Man was founded on 10 principles, including radical self-expression, gifting and decommodification. Nothing is sold at Burning Man except for ice and coffee, and there aren’t any corporate sponsorships, big-name bands or food trucks.

Participants must bring everything they need to survive (including drinking water), and many people share food, drink and gifts with each other in a communal spirit.

I drove more than 1,100 miles from Santa Fe, N.M., to Burning Man in 2005 to meet my brother and a group of “burners” in a theme camp called Furtopia. I didn’t know what to expect and arrived in the middle of a whipping sandstorm that exhaled chalky dust into everything in its path, including my tent, sleeping bag and clothes within minutes of setting up camp. It was a harsh welcome but an amazing trip into a surreal world where harsh elements battle with free spirits. WD Brendan L. Smith (www.brendanlsmith.com) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat and a mixed-media artist in Washington, D.C.

Cultural Tourism DC invites you to participate in

Passport DC, May 1-31, 2018!

Passport DC highlights DC’s thriving international community and its lively and varied culture through programs at more than 70 embassies and more than 40 of DC’s very best cultural institutions. This annual festival celebrates “International Cultural Awareness Month” in the District of Columbia and offers an array of cultural activities at embassy open houses, street festivals, museums, art spaces, and performing arts organizations throughout DC.

The Signature Events of Passport DC 2018 Pre-Passport DC Event International Children’s Festival Sunday, April 29

There is something for everyone at Passport DC. Experience a journey around the world without leaving the city!

European Month of Culture May 1-31 Flower Mart at National Cathedral Friday and Saturday, May 4 and 5 Around the World Embassy Tour Saturday, May 5 European Union Embassies’ Open House Saturday, May 12 Embassy Chef Challenge Thursday, May 17 National Asian Heritage Festival: Fiesta Asia!

Saturday, May 19

To volunteer to help at Passport DC, register at www.culturaltourismdc.org/portal/ passport-dc-volunteer-opportunities To sponsor Passport DC and its Signature Events, contact Cultural Tourism DC at 202-661-7581 or info@CulturalTourismDC.org Facebook: CulturalTourismDC Twitter: @DCCulture #PassportDC Instagram: @culturaltourismdc YouTube: youtube.com/culturaltourismdc

THANK YOU PASSPORT DC SPONSORS and PARTNERS!

For more information about Passport DC, visit www.culturaltourismdc.org/portal/passport-dc1

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 37

WD | Culture | Diplomatic Spouses

Pearl of the Gulf Bahraini Wife and Mother of Five Touts Tiny Island’s Transformation •

BY GAIL SCOTT

“B

ahrain is a relatively small country been accused by human rights groups of stifling dissent by jailing with a big heart,” said Shaikha Aiactivists and opposition leaders. sha AlKhalifa, the wife of Bahraini Ambassador Shaikh Abdullah bin Bahrain also walks a fine line in balancing relations with its larger Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa. “Although neighbors, namely Saudi Arabia, its Bahrain was once called ‘the island of 1 milSunni ally. It is the third-smallest lion palm trees,’ today many of those palm country in Asia after the Maldives trees have been replaced with skyscrapers and Singapore, with a population of and retail outlets…. The big misconception is just 1.4 million, including many exthat we are only desert, palm trees and campats and migrant workers. Last year, els.” it joined Saudi Arabia and the UAE Despite Bahrain’s rapid development as to launch a blockade against Qatar a modern, cosmopolitan hub in the Arab for its alleged ties to terrorist groups world, AlKhalifa is occasionally nostalgic and relations with Iran, Saudi Araabout the kingdom’s past and doesn’t want bia’s Shiite rival. The U.S. has tried, its cultural traditions to be overshadowed by unsuccessfully so far, to mediate the Western imports, such as a mall that recently crisis among its Gulf allies. opened with familiar brands such as the Cheesecake Factory, Dominos, McDonald’s, Despite the current schism with Qatar and ongoing accusations of Victoria’s Secret and the GAP. Bahrain’s marginalization of its ShiYet elements of the past are still preserved. ite majority, the U.S. has generally Despite the collapse of Bahrain’s famed pearl backed Bahrain, home to the U.S. industry, “we have the best pearls,” AlKhalifa Navy’s 5th Fleet, which carries out said with a smile. “They are natural and not missions throughout the region. cultured. You can tell the difference by the size.”

Not only is Bahrain home to the critical naval base, “we have had a And with change has come many welcome free trade agreement with the U.S. new additions. “We are the first country in since 2006, and we have new legthe region to host the Formula 1 Grand Prix, islation which allows foreigners to which is one of the biggest annual attracbecome 100 percent owners of any tions,” she noted. company they wish to establish, But the most important change, she says, which could be done online today,” is the tiny island country’s evolution into a AlKhalifa pointed out. tolerant, stable constitutional monarchy with a thriving economy and close ties to the U.S. She added that “we have lived among Americans for many deThe archipelago of islands, located just east cades.” Bahrain’s relationship with of Saudi Arabia, has been a key trading crossthe United States started in the late roads for centuries. Pearl fisheries formed the PHOTO: GAIL SCOTT 1800s on a people-to-people level. basis of Bahrain’s wealth for many years until “Missionaries from Minnesota, the the early 20th century, when the pearl market collapsed and crude oil deposits were discovstate my mother was from, visited ered. But Bahrain lacks the large oil reserves Bahrain and ended up establishing of its energy-rich neighbors, so since its inthe American Mission Hospital, dependence in 1971, it has steadily worked which is still functioning today and to diversify its economy, becoming a leading expanding into other locations on regional banking center. the island.”

“Although we do have some natural reAlKhalifa’s ties to the U.S. are persources [such as] oil and aluminum, now sonal. Her mother, who died when more than 80 percent of our GDP comes AlKhalifa was just 1 year old, was SHAIKHA AISHA ALKHALIFA from the non-oil sector: banking, financial an American. Growing up with her services and tourism, especially the big cruise wife of Bahraini Ambassador Shaikh Abdullah bin Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa grandmother on her mother’s side, ships,” AlKhalifa told us. who was Bahraini, was “a great ex“We might have different local traditions when compared to the U.S., [but] our perience,” she said. Mama Lulwa, as she was known, “was a blessing to me. She was values are the same: equality in pay and work-oriented [people],” she added. “We one of the Bahrain’s greatest women’s advocates; in her house, entertaining was part have the oldest established banking industry and the freest economy in the Middle of the furniture.”

East and North Africa…. We have a culture of tolerance, promoting peaceful coexAlKhalifa’s grandmother was involved in many voluntary activities, which resultistence. Everyone can make their own choices.” ed in the establishment of the Mother and Child’s Welfare Society in 1960. AlKhalifa She noted that Bahraini women were the first in the region to receive an educa- said this experience gave her a deep appreciation of how women’s empowerment is tion in the 1920s, and were given the right to vote and run for office in the early essential for community development. She said she is planning to continue Mama 2000s.

Lulwa’s focus on women’s empowerment and helping orphans.

AlKhalifa said she believes in “doing good through bringing people together. It is In high school, AlKhalifa was a member of the journalism club and had a passion exciting not only to learn about others, but also to share my own [traditions]. Bah- for the arts that led her to continue her studies abroad. She earned her bachelor’s rain, an island in the trade routes connecting Asia to Africa and Europe, was always degree from Boston’s Massachusetts College of Art and Design. That’s where she met a melting pot since early civilization. It’s a small world in Bahrain. Everyone knows her husband. “All our cousins were in Boston. A mutual relative introduced us. We everyone else. Our homes in Bahrain have always been open to visitors,” she said. were both 18,” she recalled.

“The people are very friendly. We have a big mix of expats and different religions.”

“We come from the same big family. I always knew of him” she said, noting that Politically, Bahrain is also relatively open compared to many of its neighbors, with marrying a distant relative is not uncommon in Bahrain. “In college, we grew close an elected legislative assembly, although the country has been ruled by the Al Khal- together since we both went to school in the same city, a year apart.” ifa family since 1783. The constitutional monarchy, led by a Sunni minority, also The ambassador has two master’s degrees, one in management and the second in struggles to manage its relations with the country’s much larger Shiite population. business administration. He is currently working on a Ph.D. from the International Those tensions exploded in early 2011 during the Arab Spring uprisings, as Bah- School of Management based in Paris. “I knew he was intelligent, smart and would rain’s Shiites demanded greater political representation and rights. The government, be devoted to his work,” AlKhalifa said. aided by troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, cracked down on the protests, “We were engaged and before we were married, I went for a month with my which eventually died down. While some efforts were made at political reconciliSEE DIPLOMATIC SPOUSES • PAGE 53 ation, frustrations among the country’s Shiite still fester, and the government has

“

We might have different local traditions when compared to the U.S., [but] our values are the same…. We have a culture of tolerance, promoting peaceful coexistence. Everyone can make their own choices.

38 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

”

Theater | Culture | WD

Flying High Cirque du Soleil’s ‘LUZIA’ Creates Surreal Mexican Dreamscape •

BY MICHAEL COLEMAN

LUZIA THROUGH JUNE 17 LERNER TOWN SQUARE IN TYSONS II TICKETS START AT $39.

WWW.CIRQUEDUSOLEIL.COM/LUZIA

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t a time when Washington — or at least President Donald Trump — is in a perpetual state of agitation over Mexico, Cirque du Soleil, the legendary acrobatic and theater troupe, has arrived in the region bearing nothing but love and admiration for America’s neighbor the south.

“LUZIA” — a two-year-old Cirque show celebrating Mexico that was nearly two decades in the making — runs through June 17 in Tysons Corner in Virginia. The elaborate production staged under the big tent takes the audience to an imaginary Mexico, where light (“luz” in Spanish) quenches the spirit, and rain (“lluvia”) soothes the soul. It also blessedly steers completely clear of politics.

“We have nothing politically charged,” said Gracie Valdez, artistic director of “LUZIA” and a Fairfax County, Va., native, in a telephone interview with The Diplomat. “It’s performance art and we really just celebrate the beautiful, rich culture that Mexico is. We have no political agenda.”

“LUZIA” incorporates a series of grand visual surprises and breathtaking acrobatic performances to draw audiences into surreal, dream-like scenes including an old movie set, the ocean, a smoky dance hall and a sprawling, arid desert. The show even incorporates rainfall into acrobatic and artistic scenes — a first for a Cirque du Soleil touring production. The result is more “oohs” and “ahhs” from amazed and appreciative audiences than ever.

“We’re really celebrating an environment and a culture, but it’s an imaginary place,” Valdez said. “We go through different tableaus and settings and they don’t necessarily go hand in hand together. It’s more of a journey than a direct story we’re trying to tell.”

As artistic director, Valdez has the extensive mandate of ensuring the quality of each performance, overseeing the selection and integration of new cast members, supporting and feeding the artistic and acrobatic evolution of the show, and managing the creation of back-up scenarios.

Valdez noted that Daniele Finzi Pasca, the show’s creator and director, spent more than a decade living in Mexico, traveling and exploring before he conceived of and wrote “LUZIA,” and the familiarity and understanding shines through in spectacular ways.

“He was inspired by the richness of the culture and he wanted to create ‘LUZIA’ as a tribute, and to pay homage to the adventures that he had and the sites that he saw,” Valdez explained.

As artistic director, Valdez’s job is to manage a cast of 44 performers and artists who put on eight to 10 shows per week for anywhere between five and 12 weeks. The cast members throw themselves into their work with intensity unrivaled in any theater production company in the world.

“We work with the best acrobats in the world, the best musicians — we

PHOTOS: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL

“LUZIA” — a two-year-old Cirque show celebrating Mexico that was nearly two decades in the making — runs through June 17 in Tysons Corner in Virginia.

have to remind them that they are actual human beings, real people,” Valdez said, referring to the performers’ singlemindedness and ability to stay focused on their roles. “They are so dedicated to their art and their disciplines. Their body is their occupation. They take really good care of themselves and they are completely dedicated to what they do.”

Now in her 10th season with the Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil, Valdez said the latest production incorporates dazzling new technologies that enhance the mind-blowing acrobatics onstage.

“This show has new technologies we’ve integrated into the production,” Valdez explained. “We have a rain curtain.

We have massive treadmills. We have really big turntables.

We have a different stage surface and different types of projection and automation equipment that is unique to ‘LUZIA.’ We’ve been able to utilize all of those technologies to the best of our abilities.”

Integrating the element of water to a big-top show is a first at Cirque du Soleil. The production incorporates a water basin under the stage floor, which allows for a giant indoor rain curtain.

All of the water is recycled.

“People are very interested in how it’s done,” Valdez noted. “It’s pretty incredible.”

While Cirque likes to keep up with technology to make performances as awe-inspiring as possible, the human body remains the star of the show.

“The human aspect, the human body, the human form is really what we like to showcase and is what the audience relates to,” Valdez said. WD Michael Coleman (@michaelcoleman) is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 39

WD | Culture | Art

East-West Blender Korean-Born, Atlanta-Based Artist Mixes Familiar with Foreign in Asian-Western Fusion •

BY MACKENZIE WEINGER

Jiha Moon: Double Welcome, Most Everyone’s Mad Here THROUGH MAY 27 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM 4400 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., NW

(202) 885-1000 WWW.AMERICAN.EDU/CAS/MUSEUM/

A

kaleidoscope of colors, pop culture references and traditional Asian art techniques collide in “Jiha Moon: Double Welcome, Most Everyone’s Mad Here,” an exhibition suffused with both satirical whimsy and contemporary relevance.

The show, at the American University Museum, is a quirky surprise from an artist who revels in playing games and posing probing questions. Images of Angry Birds and emojis mix with Asian tigers and Indian gods in compositions that incorporate Eastern art techniques and iconography through the use of Hanji paper and Korean silk, peaches and fans.

It’s a fun, irreverent show that blurs the lines between East and West, the familiar and the foreign, using small details to ask big questions about racial perceptions, technology and global identity.

“I think that Jiha Moon’s work has this really universal appeal to it. It’s colorful, there are a lot of references to popular culture, but the more you look at it, the more you realize she’s making very smart and sometimes satirical commentary about objects or imagery that have been associated with Asian culture [but] not necessarily part of Asian culture,” curator Amy Moorefield told The Washington Diplomat.

Take, for instance, Moon’s use of fortune cookies. The artist’s ceramic fortune cookies reflect the history and interplay of cultures that characterizes the core of her work. As Moorefield noted, “Fortune cookies have been sort of assigned to China or Asia, but they were developed in California. It’s really a smart way of her responding as an artist, who was born in Korea but lives in Atlanta, to say, ‘Hey, I’m not defined by one culture. I’m defined by many. And my work embraces all of that.’”

Look closely and visitors will see the all-too-familiar Facebook “F” logo, followed closely by a horseshoe — really, a “U” — a symbol of good luck. “I don’t want my work to appear whiny or too serious about it. I always love humor and jokes in art,” Moon said in a video about this show produced by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Moon’s mixed-media approach is visually enticing. She effectively mixes cultural references from Korea, Japan and China with Western elements, drawing chuckles even as she tries to shake up and unsettle those viewing her work.

“She is delightful, she has such smart things to talk about, she is incredibly accessible as an artist,” Moorefield said. “She’s just got this great sense of humor, but at the same time she’s touching on really important elements of global culture and American culture and taking back what is really part of her heritage as well in terms of Korean culture.”

Quirky details are depicted in gaudy acrylic colors on traditional Korean

40 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

PHOTOS: HALSEY INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART / AMERICAN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM

Korean-born, Atlanta-based artist Jiha Moon blends Asian art techniques with Western elements in quirky pieces such as, from clockwise top: “Most Everyone’s Mad Here”; “Fortune Cookie”; “Mutt”; “Mexican Korean Blue Willow Face”; and “Angry Peach.”

Hanji paper or on carefully crafted ceramic vases. Moon also explores the Blue Willow china pattern, created in England in the 18th century but often thought to be Chinese in origin. The patterns, however, were inspired by the blue-andwhite wares imported from China. And she frequently riffs on peaches, an important iconography element in Asian art, symbolizing fertility and fruitfulness, turning that, for instance, into an Angry Peach with the popular Finnish video game Angry Bird as the central image.

“There are all those types of little moments if you look carefully throughout the exhibit,” Moorefield said.

Moon created a new installation for this travelling exhibition, which has gone to 10 venues across the United States, that reflects on a traditional Korean dining experience. “For Jiha, it was very important for her, and it was also sort of new for her, to start doing these site-specific or unique installations. It was a wonderful way for her to showcase a lot of her ceramic work, which has become a really important core of what she focuses on,” Moorefield said.

“But also, it kind of opens the door a little bit — you’re like, ‘What are these low tables and these beautiful pillows? It looks like it’s maybe set for dining?’ And these ceramic vessels are strange and weird and they look like faces or fortune cookies. So, it became a really wonderful way to communicate to people about different types of dining, but also the work is very subtly charming as well as subtly [saying], ‘This is my culture, but I’m using elements from a variety of Western cultures to make commentary,’” Moorefield explained.

It’s particularly apt that Moon has compared her own work to food. “I want that taste to come at the end,” she said in the documentary about the exhibition.

“On the top, there’s a sour, there’s a sweet, there’s spicy, all types of interesting tastes of life on it, and then deep down it’s subtle and it’s very serious.” WD Mackenzie Weinger is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Theater | Culture | WD

Definitely Not in Kansas ‘The Wiz’ Has More Shticks Than a Barrel of Flying Monkeys •

BY LISA TROSHINSKY

The Wiz THROUGH MAY 12 FORD’S THEATRE 511 10TH ST., NW

(202) 347-4833

| WWW.FORDS.ORG

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ne of the most iconic children’s fantasy productions of all time, “The Wizard of Oz” is tough to match in pure entertainment value. “The Wiz,” an African American adaption of L. Frank Baum’s magical novel, currently at Ford’s Theatre, does well to follow in its footsteps with ingenious imagination and fancy. This version stays true to the original script, while spicing it up with powerful African American traditions and humorous present-day cultural references.

Imagine your task is to recreate a tornado with a whirling farmhouse, flying monkeys, good and bad witches appearing and disappearing out of thin air, and PHOTOS: CAROL ROSEGG a yellow brick road leading to a magical Ines Nassara, above center and below left, stars as Dorothy in “The Wiz,” the Ford’s Theatre adaptation land of Oz — without the help of cameras or special effects. Well, for director Kent Gash of L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s novel “The Wizard of Oz.” and his talented technical crew, these conundrums appear to be no-brainers. They simply use all the insecurities behind a massive Afro and dark makings of a live production — a talented cast, shades. He tells his story through the number props, costumes, choreography and lighting — to “Mean Ole Lion,” in which his dance movements represent the treacherous weather, landscape and channel Tina Turner in her heyday. He is more visual tricks that form the backdrop of this imagiDrama Queen than King of the Jungle. He claims native tale. his lack of bravery is because he was coddled as To set the scene, lighting designer Rui Rita projan only son by an overbearing mama and as a ects images of tall corn husks in the background to result, he has been in therapy with an owl. When convey acres of ripe Kansas crop surrounding the informed The Wiz could give him courage, he Gales’s clapboard farmhouse. asks, “In only one session?”

All of a sudden, the weather shifts for the worse.

But the fun has only just begun.

A leggy and beautifully dexterous DeMoya Watson The Wiz, played by Jobari Parker-Namdar, is Brown portrays the perilous, and at the same time reminiscent of the singer Prince in all his openseductive, tornado, complete with a choreography chested-shirt and purple glory. In the number of furious hip thrusts, circles, kicks and leaps. The “Emerald City,” he’s at the helm of a roller-skatresult is the farmhouse is a moving prop that slowly turns upside ing Motown Act, at which time Dorothy and her crew down as Watson Brown somehow climbs her way onto its top in know they must be in the right place at the right time. triumph.

The joyous mayhem can’t last forever, however. Fast We’re now definitely not in Kansas any more. In Munchkinland, forward to Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, tellnew lighting projections create the Cotton Club and the Apollo ing her hit men, the winged monkeys, to find and capture Theater using real footage of that era. Plump, short Munchkins Dorothy and friends. To help, she uses Snapchat selfies (wearing sumo wrestling suits that cover up the fact they’re sitprojected larger than life on the stage backdrop to help ting on rolling chairs) tap dance through Dorothy’s arrival as she the monkeys easily identify their target. discovers the Wicked Witch’s untimely death under her house.

After Evillene is destroyed (spoiler alert), her helpers, Meanwhile, Monique Midgette, as Good Witch Glinda’s sister known here as “Winkies,” break out in a celebratory AfAddaperle, makes her comical bumbling entrance in a cloud of rican dance in what looks like a safari, singing the inspismoke, carrying her ineffectual magic “wanga.” rational “Can You Feel a Brand-New Day?” Glinda (Awa When Dorothy, played with naïve and childish aplomb by Ines Sel Secka), the Good Witch of the South, turns up as the Nassara, questions how to leave this craziness and get back home, African Queen and directs Dorothy to click her magic a cast of characters, holding golden scepters representing the inslippers to return home to Kansas. This is, of course, after famous Yellow Brick Road, tell her to follow them to seek help from The Wiz. The Wiz, who turns out just to be a car salesman from Nebraska, fails to deliver Dorothy follows the Yellow Brick Road until she encounters the Scarecrow, her to her homeland via hot air balloon. played by an incredibly limber Hasani Allen, who is strung up on a pole and surAre these over-the-top antics and zany characterizations too much? Not at all; rounded by an assortment of dancing crows. Reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s they’re just what the doctor ordered for keeping a time-honored show current portrayal of the character in the movie version, Allen leaps and splits his way and fresh. “The Wiz,” in this form, is still a display of good versus evil, peppered into our hearts with his vulture backup dancers. with a thick layer of humor that allows the audience to acknowledge that chilDorothy and Scarecrow then give us our first taste of a jaunty “Ease on Down dren and adults alike are never too old for good old-fashioned imagination and the Road,” after which they encounter a massive Tinman, played by Kevin morals. WD McAllister, who sings “Slide Some Oil into Me.” The Cowardly Lion, played by Christopher Michael Richardson, hides his Lisa Troshinsky is the theater reviewer for The Washington Diplomat.

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 41

WD | Culture | Film

Cinema Listings *Unless specific times are listed, please check the theater for times. Theater locations are subject to change. *WJFF = Washington Jewish Film Festival

case, and his prime suspect is sexy Choden.

But the missing woman is the abbess of a Buddhist nunnery, and there are some unexpected forces at work in this feminist twist on film noir.

AFRIKAANS

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., May 13, 2 p.m.

An Act of Defiance

ENGLISH

Directed by Jean van de Velde (Netherlands, 2018, 123 min.)

In this riveting historical drama, 10 political activists, including Nelson Mandela and his inner circle of black and Jewish supporters, face looming death sentences after they are caught up in a raid by the apartheid South African government.

Bram Fischer, a sympathetic lawyer, risks his career and freedom to defend these men (WJFF; Afrikaans and English).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Thu., May 3, 8:45 p.m.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Tue., May 8, 8:15 p.m.

BURMESE Golden Kingdom Directed by Brian Perkins (Germany/U.S./Myanmar, 2015, 101 min.)

At their monastery nestled in the jungle hills of Myanmar, life cycles peacefully for four very young Buddhist monks. One day, the head abbot departs on a journey through the mountain pass. Alone and exposed, the four young boys must now fend for themselves (director in person).

Freer Gallery of Art Fri., May 4, 7 p.m.

CATALAN Summer 1993

Back to the Fatherland Directed by Kat Rohrer and Gil Levanon (Austria/Germany/Israel, 2017, 77 min.)

Gil and Kat have been friends since college.

Gil is from Israel, Kat from Austria; Gil is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Kat the granddaughter of a Nazi officer.

Through them we meet Dan and Guy, who have decided to move to Austria and Germany respectively, decisions that gravely affect their relationships with their families (WJFF; English, Hebrew and German).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Mon., May 7, 6:15 p.m.

Edlavitch DCJCC Wed., May 9, 6:15 p.m.

Beirut Directed by Brad Anderson (U.S., 2018) A U.S. diplomat flees Lebanon in 1972 after a tragic incident. Ten years later, he is called back to war-torn Beirut by a CIA operative to negotiate for the life of a friend he left behind.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema

Bye Bye Germany Directed by Sam Garbarski (Germany/Luxembourg/Belgium, 2018, 102 min.)

After her mother’s death, 6-year-old Frida is sent to her uncle’s family to live with them in the countryside. But Frida finds it hard to forget her mother and adapt to her new life.

Frankfurt, 1946. David Bermann and a few Jewish friends have, against all odds, survived the murderous Nazi regime and are now dreaming of leaving for a new life in America. But how will they get the money in these tough postwar times — and can they overcome David’s shady past?

(English and German)

Landmark’s Theatres Opens Fri., May 25

Landmark’s Theatres Opens Fri., May 18

Directed by Carla Simón (Spain, 2018, 97 min.)

DUTCH The Hero Directed by Menno Meyjes (Netherlands, 2016, 95 min.)

Sara Silverstein is looking forward to returning to the Netherlands with her family after many years living as an expat in L.A. But her happiness about reuniting with her elderly parents and sister is overshadowed almost immediately by a series of antiSemitic violent assaults, which reveal a dark family secret (WJFF).

Edlavitch DCJCC Sat., May 12, 2:15 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sun., May 13, 3:30 p.m.

DZONGKHA Honeygiver among the Dogs Directed by Dechen Roder (Bhutan, 2016, 132 min.)

When a woman goes missing from a small village, policeman Kinley is put on the

The Cakemaker Directed by Ofir Raul Graizer (Germany/Israel, 2017, 105 min.)

German baker Tomas’s affair with Israeli businessman Oren ends abruptly when Oren dies. Without time to process, Tomas travels to Jerusalem and finds work in a cafe run by his lover’s widow, Anat, but keeps his identity a secret (WJFF; English, Hebrew and German).

Edlavitch DCJCC Tue., May 8, 7:30 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 12, 4:30 p.m.

The Death of Stalin Directed by Armando Iannucci (U.K./Canada/France/Belgium, 2018, 107 min.)

Moscow, 1953: when tyrannical dictator Joseph Stalin drops dead, his parasitic cronies square off in a frantic power struggle to be the next Soviet leader in this uproarious, wickedly irreverent satire.

AFI Silver Theatre

42 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema

Disobedience Directed by Sebastián Lelio Ireland/U.K./U.S., 2018, 114 min.)

Disobedience. Rachel Weisz stars as a woman who returns to the orthodox Jewish community that shunned her for decades earlier because of her attraction to a childhood friend (Rachel McAdams).

Once back, passions between the two women reignite as they explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Opens Fri., May 4

Find Me Directed by Tom Huang (U.S., 2018, 102 min.)

Joe is an accountant who is on a downward spiral after a painful divorce. His only solace is his co-worker and “office wife” Amelia, who tries to get Joe to get out again and live life, which he can’t yet bring himself to do. It’s only when Amelia mysteriously disappears for weeks that he finally gets himself out of his shell to try to find her through clues she leaves for him in National Parks across the West (part of the Asian Pacific American Film Festival).

U.S. Navy Memorial Burke Theatre Sun., May 13, 4 p.m.

wFinding Your Feet Directed by Richard Loncraine (U.K., 2018, 111 min.)

On the eve of her retirement, a middleclass, judgmental snob discovers her husband has been having an affair with her best friend and is forced into exile with her bohemian sister who lives on an impoverished inner-city council estate.

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema

Ghost Stories Directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman (U.K., 2018, 97 min.)

Paranormal skeptic professor Phillip Goodman embarks upon a terror-filled quest when he stumbles across a long-lost file containing details of three cases of inexplicable “hauntings,” each of which seems to have a connection to Goodman’s life.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema

Godard Mon Amour Directed by Michel Hazanavicius (France/Myanmar/Italy, 2018, 107 min.)

Actress Anne Wiazemsky finds herself juggling political protests and artistic challenges in her married life with the much older renowned filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. As 1960s France undergoes enormous cultural change, so too does Anne’s dynamic with her husband (English, French and Italian).

Landmark’s Theatres Opens Fri., May 11

Hannah Senesh: Blessed Is the Match Directed by Roberta Grossman (U.S., 2008, 86 min.)

In 1944, 22-year-old Hannah Senesh parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe with a small group of Jewish volunteers

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | May 2018 from Palestine. Theirs was the only military rescue mission for Jews that occurred in World War II (WJFF).

AFI Silver Theatre Sun., May 6, 5:45 p.m.

Isle of Dogs Directed by Wes Anderson (U.S./Germany, 2018, 101 min.)

This animated adventure follows Atari Kobayashi, a 12-year-old ward to corrupt Mayor Kobayashi. When, by executive decree, all the canine pets of Megasaki City are exiled to a vast garbage-dump called Trash Island, Atari sets off alone in a miniature Junior-Turbo Prop and flies across the river in search of his bodyguard-dog.

of the Russian Revolution killed tens of thousands of Jews. Feiga Shamis, a Jewish mother of 12, wrote about those years in a rare first-hand account. Decades later, her granddaughter set out from South Africa to explore the family’s roots in Ukraine, where dhe finds a world virtually stripped of its Jewish past (WJFF).

Edlavitch DCJCC Sat., May 5, 6:30 p.m.

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sun., May 6, 4:15 p.m.

My Son Tenzin Directed by Tsultrim Dorjee and Tashi Wangchuk

The Judge

(U.S., 2017, 70 min.)

In this warm-hearted, clear-eyed look at life in exile for a new generation of Tibetans separated from their homeland, a monk arrives in the United States to search for his grown son, Tenzin, who had been sent away to get an education.

Directed by Erika Cohn (U.S., 2018, 76 min.)

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., May 6, 1 p.m.

When she was a young lawyer, Kholoud AlFaqih walked into the office of Palestine’s Chief Justice and announced she wanted to join the bench. He laughed at her. But just a few years later, Kholoud became the first woman judge to be appointed to the Middle East’s religious courts.

An Open Door: Holocaust Rescue in the Philippines

AFI Silver Theatre Angelika Mosaic Landmark’s E Street Cinema Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema

Directed by Noel Izon (U.S., 2018)

Lean on Pete

“An Open Door” is a feature-length documentary on the uplifting story of how a small Asian nation was able to save over 1,300 Jews as they fled the pogroms of Nazi Germany (opening night film of the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival).

Directed by Andrew Haigh (U.K., 2018, 121 min.)

U.S. Navy Memorial Burke Theatre Fri., May 11, 5 p.m.

Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson arrives in Oregon with his single father Ray, both of them eager for a fresh start after a series of hard knocks. While Ray descends into personal turmoil, Charley finds acceptance and camaraderie at a local racetrack where he lands a job caring for an aging Quarter Horse named Lean On Pete.

RBG

West End Cinema Opens Fri., May 4

Angelika Mosaic Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema West End Cinema

The Legend of King Solomon Directed by Albert Hanan Kaminski (Hungary/Israel, 2017, 80 min.)

In this animated family adaptation of the Biblical story, the young Solomon must save the kingdom of Jerusalem from the evil devil Asmodeus (WJFF).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Sun., May 6, 10:30 a.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sun., May 13, 10:15 a.m.

Love After Love Directed by Russell Harbaugh (U.S., 2018, 91 min.)

What happens when you lose the foundation of your family? In the wake of a husband and father’s death, the family members he leaves behind find themselves adrift — and in danger of drifting apart — as they each try to find meaning in a world without the man who held them together.

West End Cinema

My Dear Children Directed by LeeAnn Dance and Cliff Hackel (U.S., 2018, 70 min.)

The pogroms that followed on the heels

Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West (U.S., 2018, 97 min.)

At the age of 84, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a breathtaking legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But without a definitive Ginsburg biography, the unique personal journey of this diminutive, quiet warrior’s rise to the nation’s highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans—until now.

Angelika Mosaic Landmark’s E Street Cinema Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Opens Fri., May 4

The Seagull Directed by Michael Mayer (U.S., 2018, 98 min.)

An aging actress named Irina Arkadina pays summer visits to her brother Pjotr and her son Konstantin on a country estate.

On one occasion, she brings Boris, a successful novelist, with her. Nina, a free and innocent girl on a neighboring estate, falls in love with Boris. As he lightly consumes and rejects Nina, so the actress all her life has consumed and rejected her son, who loves Nina.

Angelika Mosaic Opens Fri., May 25

Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema Directed by Danny Ben-Moshe (Australia/India, 2017, 100 min.)

A celebration of the all-singing, alldancing history of the world’s largest film industry, “Shalom Bollywood” reveals the unlikely story of the 2,000-year-old Indian-

Jewish community and its formative place in shaping Indian cinema (WJFF).

Edlavitch DCJCC Mon., May 7, 8:30 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 12, 12:15 p.m.

Spiral Directed by Laura Fairrie U.S., 2017, 79 min.)

Anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and physical and verbal assaults against Jews are on the rise throughout Europe, particularly in France. Director Laura Fairrie presents an alarming look at the impact of this free reign of hatred on the lives of ordinary people (WJFF; English and French).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Thu., May 3, 8:15 p.m.

Edlavitch DCJCC Sat., May 12, 4:30 p.m.

The Strangest Stranger Directed by Magnus Bärtus (Japan/Sweden, 2017, 73 min.)

The charismatic and talkative Waka is a true chameleon in Tokyo — a self-proclaimed outsider, a homosexual, the center of any party, and a descendant from an age-old Jewish lineage, if you believe his claims (WJFF; English, Japanese and French).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sat., May 5, 12:15 p.m.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Sun., May 6, 8:15 p.m.

Summer in the Forest Directed by Randall Wright (U.K./France/Palestine, 2018, 108 min.)

Like countless others, Philippe, Michel, Andre and Patrick were labeled “idiots,” locked away and forgotten in violent asylums, until the 1960s, when the young philosopher Jean Vanier took a stand and secured their release. Together they created a commune at the edge of a beautiful forest near Paris and a quiet revolution was born.

West End Cinema

FRENCH Les amants réguliers Directed by Philippe Garrel (France, 2005, 178 min.)

A participant observer in the events of May ’68, Philippe Garrel used his son Louis as his leading actor and the classically trained Parisian cinematographer William Lubtchansky to shoot this poetic evocation of the era (preceded by “Actua 1” (France, 1968, 8 min.)).

National Gallery of Art Sat., May 19, 2:30 p.m.

Détruisez-vous Directed by Serge Bard (France, 1968, 75 min.)

A student of sociology, Serge Bard was dissatisfied with his university life and decided to drop out. In the process, he began experimenting with a movie camera.

Foreshadowing the growing spirit of revolt, Bard cast in this early film the artist and activist Alain Jouffroy who plays a professor lecturing to a nearly empty classroom on the necessity of revolution.

National Gallery of Art Sat., May 12, 2:30 p.m.

Film | Culture | WD

A Memoir of War (La douleur) Directed by Emmanuel Finkiel (Belgium/France, 2017, 127 min.)

Marguerite Duras and her husband, writer Robert Antelme, were members of the Resistance living in Nazi-occupied Paris. Desperate for news of Robert, who has been arrested and sent to Dachau, Marguerite enters into a high-risk game of psychological intrigue with French Nazi collaborator Rabier (WJFF).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Thu., May 3, 8:30 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 5, 1 p.m.

Mr. and Mrs. Adelman Directed by Nicolas Bedos (France, 2017, 120 min.)

A French couple is consumed with and defined by each other in life and work: he, an accomplished writer; she, his editor and occasional muse (WJFF).

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 5, 3:40 p.m.

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Wed., May 9, 8:15 p.m.

Racer and the Jailbird Directed by Michaël R. Roskam Belgium/France/Netherlands, 2018, 131 min.)

Keeping his identity as a member of a notorious Brussels gang renowned for their expertly executed robberies a deep secret, Gigi tends to his front, a luxury automobile import-export business, in his downtime.

Sparks fly when he meets glamorous and affluent race car driver Bibi, and despite their wildly different backgrounds, the pair fall instantly and tragically in love (French and Dutch).

Landmark’s Theatres Opens Fri., May 11

The Starry Sky Above Me Directed by Ilan Klipper (France, 2017, 76 min.)

Laurent Poitrenaux delivers a tour-de-force performance as the neurotic and wounded Bruno in the charmingly odd film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival (WJFF).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Mon., May 7, 8:30 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 12, 8:50 p.m.

The Two of Us (Le vieil homme et l’enfant) Directed by Claude Berri (France, 1967, 86 min.)

When an 8-year-old Jewish boy living in Nazi-occupied France is sent by his parents to live in the country with the Catholic parents of their friends, he is faced with a culture clash both religious and generational (WJFF).

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 5, 11 a.m.

desperately trying to avoid deportation. Only 1,700 lived to liberation. “The Invisibles” tells the stories of four survivors (WJFF closing night film).

Edlavitch DCJCC Sun., May 13, 7 p.m.

The Last Supper Directed by Florian Frerichs (Germany, 2018, 83 min.)

On the day Hitler assumes power, an affluent German-Jewish family comes together for dinner. Most of them—like many Germans at the time—do not take the Nazis seriously. When Leah announces her plans to emigrate to Palestine, her family talks her down. But when Michael indicates he’s actually an admirer of the National Socialist Movement, the family is on the brink of being torn apart (WJFF).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Sat., May 5, 4:30 p.m.

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sun., May 6, 2:45 p.m.

Tel Aviv inhabitants Gili and Yaara decide to leave the city for a fresh start in the countryside of the Galilee. As house construction progresses around them, family, professional, and money troubles gnaw at their union’s very foundations (WJFF).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sat., May 5, 12:30 p.m.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Thu., May 10, 6:20 p.m.

Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel Directed by Seth Kramer, Jeremy Newberger, Daniel Miller (Israel/Japan/South Korea/U.S., 2018, 91 min.)

“Heading Home” follows an underdog Israeli national baseball team that qualifies—for the first time ever—for the World Baseball Classic (WJFF).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sun., May 6, 12:30 p.m.

Edlavitch DCJCC Sun., May 13, 4:30 p.m.

In Her Footsteps

The Promised Band Directed by Jen Heck (U.S., 2016, 89 min.)

This is the story of a fake rock band comprised of Israeli and Palestinian women who decide that — despite their limited artistic ability — a music group offers them a useful cover under which to meet and interact (WJFF; Hebrew, Arabic and English).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sat., May 5, 8:45 p.m.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Tue., May 8, 6:15 p.m.

HEBREW

Directed by Rana Abu-Fraiha (Israel, 2017, 70 min.)

The Cousin

Naftali, an open-minded Israeli, begins to question his liberal convictions when the Palestinian day laborer he hires is accused of a heinous crime against a local teenage girl (WJFF).

In the middle of the night, Rana’s parents left the house her father had built in their Bedouin village and moved to Omer, a bourgeois Jewish town located only three miles away. After 10 years of dealing with breast cancer, her mother’s only wish was to be buried in Omer, but the town never dealt with the issue of where to bury its Arab residents (WJFF; Hebrew and Arabic).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sat., May 5, 6:30 p.m.

Edlavitch DCJCC Thu., May 10, 8:30 p.m.

Edlavitch DCJCC Sun., May 6, 1 p.m.

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Tue., May 8, 8:45 p.m.

Don’t Forget Me

Longing

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Thu., May 10, 6:15 p.m.

Eldavitch DCJCC Sun., May 13, 2:15 p.m.

Directed by Ram Nehari (France/Germany/Israel, 2017, 87 min.)

Directed by Savi Gabizon (Israel, 2017, 104 min.)

Directed by Tzahi Grad (Israel, 2017, 92 min.)

Tom dreams of being a model and suffers from an eating disorder. Neil is a tuba player who plans for his European tour while being treated at a psychiatric clinic.

Recognizing themselves in each other, they forge a tender and desperate bond in this clever, satirical, incisive film (WJFF).

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Sat., May 5, 12:30 p.m.

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sun., May 6, 7:30 p.m.

Driver (Lifney Hazikaron) Directed by Yehonatan Indursky (Israel, 2018, 90 min.)

In this intimate exploration of lives at the fringes of Bnei Brak’s ultra-Orthodox community, Nahman drives beggars to affluent homes and coaches them to spin tall tales that inspire generosity, enjoying a cut of the take. But when his wife suddenly leaves, Nahman is faced with the responsibility of taking care of his 9-yearold daughter alone (WJFF).

GERMAN

AFI Silver Theatre Thu., May 3, 7:30 p.m.

Edlavitch DCJCC Thu., May 10, 6:30 p.m.

The Invisibles

Foxtrot

Directed by Claus Räfle (Germany, 2017, 110 min.)

Directed by Samuel Maoz (Israel/Switzerland/Germany/France, 2017, 108 min.)

In June 1943, Germany infamously declared Berlin “judenfrei” — “free of Jews.” But at that moment there were still 7,000 Jews living in the Nazi capital: hiding in attics, basements, and warehouses, protected by courageous Berliners while

mourning relatives and well-meaning army bureaucrats. He spirals into a whirlwind of anger, only to experience one of life’s unfathomable twists — a twist that can only be rivaled by the surreal military experiences of his son.

Michael and Dafna are devastated when army officials show up at their home to announce the death of their son. While his sedated wife rests, Michael becomes increasingly frustrated by overzealous

In this achingly funny and bittersweet tragicomedy, a contented, well-off bachelor whose comfortable life is thrown into disarray when he learns that he is a father — and has been for nearly two decades (WJFF).

Edlavitch DCJCC Mon., May 7, 6:15 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Wed., May 9, 7:15 p.m.

Maktub Directed by Oded Raz (Israel, 2017, 105 min.)

Saving Neta Directed by Nir Bergman (Israel, 2016, 90 min.)

In a series of affecting vignettes, four women at fragile stages in their lives have chance encounters with a drifter named Neta. A lesbian musician struggles with pregnancy; a single mother can’t get through to her teenage daughter; a wife finds her seemingly idyllic marriage fraying; and a successful businesswoman reckons with her sister’s mental disability (WJFF).

One of the masterpieces of 1950s Bombay cinema, Raj Kapoor directs and stars as an honest country youth who comes to Bombay in search of work and quickly discovers that honesty is not much of an asset in the big city (WJFF).

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 12, 2:15 p.m.

HUNGARIAN Budapest Noir Directed by Éva Gárdos (Hungary, 2017, 94 min.)

Set in the politically fraught autumn of 1936, this mystery follows hard-boiled reporter Zsigmond Gordon as he probes the murder of a young prostitute (WJFF; Hungarian and English).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sat., May 5, 4:15 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 12, 6:45 p.m.

JAPANESE Tampopo Directed by Juzo Itami (Japan, 1985, 114 min.)

Tevye’s Daughters Directed by Vladimir Lert (Ukraine, 2017, 120 min.)

Filmed on the actual locations which inspired Sholem Aleichem’s famous folk tale, this uproariously funny and buoyant cinematic sendup centers on a downtrodden milkman (WJFF).

Edlavitch DCJCC Sat., May 5, 4 p.m.

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Tue., May 8, 8:35 p.m.

SPANISH Cuba’s Forgotten Jewels: A Haven in Havana Directed by Judy Kreith and Robin Truesdale (U.S., 2017, 45 min.)

After allowing in a wave of Jewish refugees in the 1920s and ’30s, Cuba shut its doors to immigrants, most notably to the Jews aboard the St. Louis in 1939. In 1940, Cuba changed course and took in 6,000 Jewish refugees, including hundreds of Jewish diamond cutters who turned the tropical island into one of the world’s major diamond-polishing centers (WJFF).

Freer Gallery of Art Wed., May 2, 2 p.m.

The Last Suit (El ultimo traje)

Directed by Matan Yair (Israel/Poland, 2017, 90 min.)

Zen for Nothing

Directed by Pablo Solarz (Argentina/Spain, 2017, 92 min.)

While his strict and demanding father sees him as a natural successor to the family’s scaffolding business, Asher finds a different sort of role model in Rami — a teacher whose class assignments inspire him to forge a new identity. When an unexpected tragedy occurs, however, Asher crosses a line of no return (WJFF).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sun., May 6, 5:15 p.m.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Wed., May 9, 8:30 p.m.

Naomi is a Mossad agent sent to Germany to protect Mona, a Lebanese informant.

Together for two weeks in a quiet Hamburg apartment, the two women develop a tense relationship that is by turns complicated, dangerous and alluring (WJFF).

Directed by Eran Riklis (Israel, 2018, 93 min.)

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Thu., May 10, 8:30 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 12, 2:30 p.m.

The latest hit Israeli TV comedy centers on four misfit Haredi students studying at a yeshiva in Jerusalem (WJFF).

The Testament

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sun., May 6, 8:15 p.m.

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Thu., May 10, 8:15 p.m.

Holocaust researcher Yoel is in a legal battle with powerful forces in Austria, concerning a World War II massacre of Jews in the village of Lensdorf (WJFF; Hebrew, English, German and Yiddish).

Directed by Asaf Saban (Israel, 2018, 80 min.)

Directed by Raj Kapoor (India, 1955, 177 min.)

Landmark’s E Street Cinema Sat., May 5, 8:40 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Tue., May 8, 7:15 p.m.

Scaffolding

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sat., May 5, 8:30 p.m.

Edlavitch DCJCC Sat., May 12, 12 p.m.

Outdoors

Shree 420

AFI Silver Theatre Sat., May 5, 6:10 p.m.

Shelter

Directed by Eliran Malka and Daniel Paran (Israel, 2018, 85 min.)

HINDI

In this controversial Cannes award-winner set in the small Russian town of Nalchik, a Jewish family’s ties fray when son David and his fiancé Lea are kidnapped (WJFF).

An enigmatic band of ramen ronin guide a noodle shop owner’s widow on her quest for the perfect recipe.

Guy Amir and Hanan Savyon play chummy partners in crime in this hilarious, politically incorrect caper comedy, which they also wrote (WJFF).

The New Black (Shababniks)

Sat., May 12, 6:30 p.m.

Directed by Amichai Greenberg (Austria/Israel, 2017, 96 min.)

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Tue., May 8, 6:20 p.m.

Edlavitch DCJCC

Directed by Werner Penzel (Germany/Japan, 2016, 100 min.)

Provocatively titled, this film is a masterly immersion into life at a Japanese Zen monastery over three seasons. Swiss novice Sabine arrives at Antaiji and, after a brief welcome, she begins to learn the monastery rules. But there’s more to life there than meditation, farming and maintenance — there are picnics, music and Wi-Fi. And after the last snow has melted away, the nuns and monks travel to Osaka, where they recite sutras in front of subway entrances as they solicit offerings in their traditional monk’s robes (Japanese, German and English).

Freer Gallery of Art Fri., May 11, 7 p.m.

ROMANIAN The Dead Nation Directed by Radu Jude (Romania, 2017, 83 min.)

Radu Jude investigates the roots of the Romanian Holocaust through a Jewish doctor’s diary, stills from a rural photo studio and chilling patriotic anthems (WJFF).

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Wed., May 9, 6:15 p.m.

AFI Silver Theatre Sun., May 13, 5:30 p.m.

Abraham Burszte’s kids have sold his Buenos Aires residence and planted him a retirement home. But Abraham survived the Holocaust, made a successful life in a foreign land and isn’t about to fade away so quietly. Instead, he’s planned a one-way trip to the other side of the world to find the man who years earlier saved him from certain death (WJFF).

AFI Silver Theatre Sun., May 6, 8 p.m.

The Third Place Directed by Nejemye Tenenbaum (Mexico, 2017, 88 min.)

One hundred years after the establishment of the Syrian-Jewish community in Mexico City, its history is relived through a number of compelling and touching stories (WJFF).

Edlavitch DCJCC Thu., May 3, 8:30 p.m.

Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema Sun., May 6, 1:45 p.m.

THAI The Three Marks of Existence Directed by Gunparwitt Phuwadolwisid (Thailand, 2012, 114 min.)

Closeness

A young Thai man, M, goes on the classic Buddhist pilgrimage tour in India and Nepal. As any good road movie requires, M meets interesting people along the way and slowly begins to understand the secret of pilgrimage (Thai and English).

Directed by Kantemir Balagov (Russia, 2017, 118 min.)

Freer Gallery of Art Sun., May 6, 3 p.m.

RUSSIAN

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 43

WD | Culture | Events

Events Listings *Unless specific times are listed, please check the venue for times. Venue locations are subject to change.

National Gallery of Art Through May 13

Through May 5

Outliers and American Vanguard Art

This collaborative installation by Perla Krauze and Barbara Liotta, artists from both sides of the Mexico-United States border, incorporates material and metaphorical qualities of stone to evoke landscape and classical sculpture. The title of the exhibit is drawn from the poem “Dry Rain” by Mexican poet Pedro Serrano, which begins: “At times the poem is a collapse/ a slow and painful landslide/ a dark and scandalous rockfall.”

Given the current state of U.S.-Mexico relations, this exhibition presents a healing gesture, recognizing our shared history.

Mexican Cultural Institute Through May 6

Ten Americans: After Paul Klee This exhibit explores the seminal role of Swiss-born artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) in the development of mid-20th century American art. “Ten Americans” sheds new light on important figures in American Abstract Expressionist and Color Field painting who adapted aspects of Klee’s art and ideology into their own artistic development. It showcases more than 60 paintings, prints and drawings from collections in the U.S. and Switzerland.

The Phillips Collection

Some 300 works explore three distinct periods in American history when mainstream and outlier artists intersected, ushering in new paradigms based on inclusion, integration and assimilation.

It’s the ’80s as you’ve never seen it before.

Explore the iconic decade when artwork became a commodity and the artist a brand.

Razor-sharp, witty, satirical and deeply subversive, these nearly 150 works examine the origins and rise of a new generation of artists in 1980s New York who blurred the lines between art, entertainment and commerce, a shift that continues to define contemporary art today.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Through May 13

Michel Sittow: Estonian Painter at the Courts of Renaissance Europe Undoubtedly the greatest Renaissance artist from Estonia, Michel Sittow (c. 1469– 1525) was born in Reval (now Tallinn), likely studied in Bruges with Hans Memling and worked at the courts of renowned European royals such as King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile.

Through some 20 works representing most of Sittow’s small oeuvre, the exhibition will

Karin Broos is one of the most widely recognized Swedish artists of our time, and this is the second presentation of her work in an exhibition outside of Sweden. With her photorealistic portrayals of apparently everyday scenes, she expresses ambiguous sentiments and universal feelings of melancholia and gloom. The subjects in her atmospheric works are mainly from her home in Östra Ämtervik, the Värmland countryside, the Fryken lakes and her own close family. Her work also often explores different kinds of interiors and self-portraits, referring to 17th-century Dutch paintings and symbolism as well as to contemporary art.

This exhibition of captivating works by modern artist Yuki Ideguchi — alongside rarely-seen masterpieces of traditional Japanese paintings from the Japanese Embassy collection — takes visitors through a history of ever-evolving paintings, dating from the 6th century to the present time, whose common threads lie in the use of traditional and unique pigments, materials and techniques.

Japan Information and Culture Center Through May 28

Through July 9

Vanishing Traditions: Textiles and Treasures from Southwest China For centuries, minority cultures in southwest China have donned elaborate textiles, jewelry, and accessories for community celebrations. Dazzling festival costumes new to the museum’s collections explore traditions now endangered by modernization.

The George Washington University Textile Museum Through July 29

To Dye for: Ikats from Central Asia With their brilliant designs, ikats are among the most distinct fabrics produced in Central Asia. Not surprisingly, ikats caught the attention of contemporary designers, most notably Oscar de la Renta. This exhibition brings together about 30 of the finest historical Central Asian ikat hangings and coats from the Freer|Sackler collections, as well as seven of Oscar de la Renta’s iconic creations, to explore the original use and function of these dazzling fabrics and the enduring appeal of their extraordinary designs.

Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings

House of Sweden

Freer Gallery of Art

For more than 40 years, Sally Mann has made experimental, elegiac and hauntingly beautiful photographs that span a broad body of work including figure studies, still lifes and landscapes. “Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings” explores how her relationship with the South has shaped her work.

Through July 1

Through Aug. 5

Cézanne Portraits

Do Ho Suh: Almost Home

Bringing together some 60 examples drawn from collections around the world, this is the first exhibition devoted to the famed post-impressionist’s portraits. The revelatory exhibition provides the first full visual account of Paul Cézanne’s portrait practice, exploring the pictorial and thematic characteristics of his works in the genre, the chronological development of his style and method, and the range and influence of his sitters.

Korean-born Do Ho Suh (b. 1962) is internationally renowned for his immersive, architectural fabric sculptures that explore the global nature of contemporary identity.

“Do Ho Suh: Almost Home” will transform the museum’s galleries through Suh’s captivating installations, which recreate to scale several of his former homes from around the world. Through these works, Suh investigates the nature of home and memory and the impact of migration and displacement on an individual’s sense of self.

Through May 28

Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s

Still Life by Karin Broos

Evolving Traditions: Paintings of Wonder from Japan

In the Library: The Richter Archive at 75

Through May 13

Through June 24

Through May 25

National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art

House of Sweden

National Gallery of Art

May 7 to Aug. 24

In celebration of the 1943 arrival of the George M. Richter Archive of Illustrations on Art — the founding collection of 60,000 photographs that formed the nucleus of the department of image collections — this installation presents the history and development of the photographic archives of the National Gallery of Art.

legacy are being released by contemporary filmmakers. The costumes presented at House of Sweden represent a mix of new and old, including examples from Tomas Alfredsson’s newly released film as well as original Nina Sandström works used in Bergman productions and other reinterpretations. The costumes are paired with large-scale photos reimagining iconic Bergman roles as well as the milieus that shaped Bergman as a storyteller.

offer an opportunity to examine his art in a broader context.

ART A Dark and Scandalous Rockfall

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | May 2018

Women House Questions about a woman’s “place” resonate in our culture, and conventional ideas persist about the house as a feminine space. This exhibition forms a sequel to the famous project “Womanhouse,” developed in 1972

by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro. Similar to their artistic foremothers in the 1970s, contemporary artists in “Women House” recast conventional ideas about women and the home with acuity and wit, creating provocative photographs, videos, sculptures and installations built with materials ranging from felt to rubber bands.

National Museum of Women in the Arts Through June 1

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Artist Patrizio Travagli invites audiences to turn our attention to the disturbing singularity of the mirror. How many times have mirrors deceived us? How many times, even if for a few moments, have we believed that the reflected image was a window or a door, an entrance not to Wonderland, as it was for Lewis Carroll’s “Alice,” but to our own common, everyday world? In the exhibition, Travagli asks you, the viewer, to become the piece of art. Your reflection in the mirror is the launching point for questions about identity, illusion and reality. For information, visit https://iicwashington. esteri.it/iic_washington/it.

Embassy of Italy Through June 3

Beyond Words: Book Illustration in the Age of Shakespeare With visually interesting illustrated books

44 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

PHOTO: FREER / SACKLER GALLERIES

An Uzbek carpet and other textiles are featured in “To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia” at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

and single sheet prints that have been rarely or never before displayed, this exhibition explores the production of the images in books in early modern Europe. Featuring more than 80 illustrated rare books and prints from the 15th to the 18th century from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the images include woodcuts, produced from carved woodblocks, and engravings and etchings, printed from copper plates.

Folger Shakespeare Library Through June 8

Whispering Glass A new photographic exhibit by Fiona Lake shares stories from Australia’s outback cattle stations through images that capture life on outback cattle stations located across Australia’s vast rangelands, stretching more than 3,000 kilometers east to west and 2,000 kilometers north to south.

Embassy of Australia Art Gallery Through June 24

Jim Chuchu’s Invocations The museum is the first institution to acquire and display Kenyan multimedia artist Jim Chuchu’s mesmerizing suite of video projections, in which two distinct videos loop in succession and follow the structure of initiation rituals. Surrounded by Chuchu’s pulsing house beats and evocative imagery, viewers are invited to contemplate the separations and releases that shape our

National Gallery of Art Through July 8

individual and collective identities.

Hung Liu in Print

National Museum of African Art

This spotlight exhibition features 16 prints and a tapestry by painter and printmaker Hung Liu that invites viewers to explore the relationship between Liu’s multi-layered paintings and the palpable, physical qualities of her works on paper. Her multifaceted body of work probes the human condition and confronts issues of culture, identity and personal and national history.

Through June 24

The Creative Nation: Swedish Music and Innovation Sweden has long been ranked as one of the most creative and innovative countries in the world, with accolades for its contributions to music, design and technology. This exhibit explores the connection between Sweden’s many technological innovations and the nation’s commercial musical prowess. From video games to communication tools, a slew of innovative products has followed in the tracks of Ericsson and Skype. And given Sweden’s long history of musical excellence, it’s hardly surprising that tech companies in Sweden also excel in the world of music. Sweden offers universal music education and is among the top nations per capita both in number of choirs and number of global stars, from dancing queens to house mafias.

House of Sweden Through June 24

Ingmar Bergman Moods: Costumes and Images Director Ingmar Bergman’s imagery continues to inspire artists of all genres today.

During the 2018 Bergman Centennial Year, many new films inspired by Bergman’s

National Museum of Women in the Arts Through July 8

Transformers: New Contemporary Latin American Sculpture by Darío Escobar and Patrick Hamilton The conceptual sculptures on display in this exhibition explore similar themes through each artist’s distinct aesthetic and thought process. Separately and together, Darío Escobar of Guatemala and Patrick Hamilton of Chile share a penchant for using common materials such as rubber tires, metal fencing, spackling knives and soccer balls. Lightly treated and often simply rearranged or reordered, Escobar and Hamilton’s found objects are transformed from commercial products into newly aestheticized artworks that also provide ideological critiques of globalization and its effects.

OAS Art Museum of the Americas

Smithsonian American Art Museum Through Aug. 5

The Prince and the Shah: Royal Portraits from Qajar Iran In our age of social media and selfies, it may be difficult to grasp the importance of painted portraits and studio photographs in 19th-century Iran. During this time, known as the Qajar era, rulers such as Fath-Ali Shah, a contemporary of Napoleon, and Nasir al-Din Shah, a contemporary of Queen Victoria, used portraiture to convey monarchical power and dynastic grandeur.

Through a selection of about thirty works from the Freer and Sackler collections, this exhibition explores how Persian artists transformed modes of representing royalty and nobility.

Freer Gallery of Art Through Aug. 5

Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints into Maiolica and Bronze Inspired by the acquisition of the important William A. Clark maiolica (glazed Italian ceramics) collection from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, this exhibition brings together some 90 objects to highlight the impact of Renaissance prints on maiolica and bronze plaquettes, the two media most dramatically influenced by the new technology of image replication.

National Gallery of Art

Events | Culture | WD Through Aug. 15

Tomb of Christ Be virtually transported to Jerusalem and discover the fascinating history of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in an immersive 3-D experience unlike anything you’ve seen in a museum before. Groups will be able to virtually visit the church and learn about its storied history and enduring mysteries.

National Geographic Through Aug. 31

Constructing Mexico68 To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the first Latin American Olympic games, this exhibit takes audiences through a simple, concrete exploration of the sporting venues built for the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics and their constant connection to design and urban art. The development of competition sites for the Olympics’ diverse sporting disciplines required not only the adaptation of existing structures, but also the rapid construction of new, modern and functional facilities. In these new spaces, it was possible to implement the use of an applied architecture that met both the needs of the audience and the functional requirements of each sporting event that occupied it.

Mexican Cultural Institute Through Nov. 12

Mark Bradford: Pickett’s Charge For his first solo exhibition in D.C., acclaimed artist Mark Bradford debuts a monumental site-specific commission inspired by Paul Philippoteaux’s 1883 cyclorama depicting the Battle of Gettysburg.

Covering the curved walls of the Hirshhorn’s Third Level Inner Circle, “Pickett’s Charge” presents 360 degrees of abstracted historical narrative.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Through Dec. 25

Visionary: Viewpoints on Africa’s Arts More than 300 works of art from the museum’s permanent collection are on view within this exhibition. Working in media as diverse as wood, ceramics, drawing, jewelry, mixed media, sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, and video, these works of art reflect the visionary ideas and styles developed by men and women from more than half of Africa’s 55 nations.

The installation is organized around seven viewpoints, each of which serve to frame and affect the manner in which African art is experienced.

National Museum of African Art Through April 20, 2020

A Right to the City After a half-century of population decline and disinvestment, Washington, D.C., and similar urban centers around the country have been witnessing a “return to the city,” with rapidly growing populations, rising rents and home prices, but also deepening inequality. “A Right to the City” explores the history of neighborhood change in the nation’s capital, and its rich history of neighborhood organizing and civic engagement that transformed the city in the face of tremendous odds.

Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum

DANCE Fri., May 25, 8 p.m.

The Washington Ballet: Giselle

A beloved Romantic ballet. Love, betrayal and forgiveness are paired with coveted virtuoso roles. This haunting and tender classic tells the story of the promise and tragedy of young love. Tickets are $25 to $75.

terflies” to inspire resistance cells throughout the country until their brutal murder by the regime in 1960. Tickets are $45.

Wolf Trap

Through May 19

DISCUSSIONS

Washington National Opera: The Barber of Seville

GALA Hispanic Theatre

Can the sharp-witted barber of Seville help Count Almaviva woo the beautiful Rosina away from a bumbling doctor? A stellar cast joins this WNO revival of Rossini’s delightful comedy — one of the most beloved opera masterpieces of all time, boasting uproarious laughs and sensational music in equal measure. Tickets are $45 to $150.

Thu., May 3, 7 p.m.

Salongespräch – Freedom of the Press: Still the Fourth Estate?

On the occasion of the International Day of the Freedom of the Press, the Austrian Press and Information Service and the Austrian Cultural Forum in D.C. present a discussion examining the state of the press on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in light of the perceived partisan erosion of trust in and credibility of the media. Admission is free; to RSVP visit http://acfdc.org.

Kennedy Center Opera House Through May 20

Snow Child

THEATER

Infused with a score that combines Alaskan string band-traditions with contemporary musical theater, “Snow Child” follows a couple rebuilding their lives in the Alaskan wilderness when they meet a magical and mysterious snow child who transforms them. Tickets are $40 to $90.

May 2 to 6

Arena Stage

Royal Shakespeare Company: Hamlet

Through May 20

Embassy of Austria

PHOTO: TEDDY WOLFF

Thu., May 24, 6 p.m.

Vietnamese-American playwright Qui Nguyen retells the story of his parents’ 1975 refugee camp romance at Studio Theatre’s “Vietgone.”

After Hours: Gallery Talks & Mixer – Science and Fashion

eurobeats-european-music-festival/ or #eurobeatsDC.

Streaming from Buenos Aires, the Cultural Center for Science of the Argentine Ministry of Science will host an interdisciplinary discussion on the intersection of science and fashion. The “After Hours” series of gallery talks and mixers takes place inside the current IDB Cultural Center exhibition “Fashioning the Future: Argentine Designers on the Edge of Tomorrow,” an experiential journey through contemporary Argentine fashion that merges science, technology and creativity.

Various locations

Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center

FESTIVALS May 1 to 31

Passport DC This month-long journey around the world hosted by Cultural Tourism DC highlights thriving international community in the nation’s capital. Celebrated annually in May, which is International Cultural Awareness Month in Washington, Passport DC features 31 days of programming by 70 embassies and some of DC’s very best cultural institutions. In 2017, more than 200,000 people enjoyed the popular embassy open houses, street festivals, performances, exhibitions, workshops and more. Highlights include the Around the World Embassy Tour (May 5); European Union Embassies’ Open House (May 12); Embassy Chef Challenge (May 17); Flower Mart at National Cathedral (May 4-5); and Fiesta Asia Street Festival (May 19). For information, www.culturaltourismdc.org/ portal/passport-dc1.

Various locations May 2 to 10

Eurobeats: European Music Festival This new festival celebrates the variety and richness of European music and talent at various venues in D.C. Supported by European Embassies the festival will present music across all genres and screen films about European music. Highlights include “French Waves: 30 Years of French Electronic Music” at Dupont Underground (May 10); “Just Another Foundry” jazz concert at the Goethe-Institut (May 6); Original Quartet at NYU DC (May 8); “Soniqua Sequence” film and music performance at the House of Sweden (May 2); and “Vinyl Generation” screening at the House of Sweden (May 6). For more information, visit http://events.euintheus.org/events/

May 8 to 20

Artes de Cuba: From the Island to the World This unprecedented gathering of Cuban and Cuban-American artists represents some of the world’s greatest from the island and the Diaspora. Featuring some of Cuba’s finest artists and leading Cuban American creators, “Artes de Cuba” will inspire with more than 50 events over two weeks, featuring music, dance, theater, film, fashion, design and more. The festival also extends beyond the Kennedy Center’s performance spaces and spills out into its halls and terraces with free exhibitions, and to the Millennium Stage with 12 free performances that will be streamed online.

Kennedy Center May 18 to 20

between Indian classical music and jazz — two styles rooted in improvisation and rhythmic dynamism. They are joined by an all-star band including saxophonist Chris Potter and renowned Bollywood playback vocalist Shankar Mahadevan. Tickets are $30 to $50.

GW Lisner Auditorium Tue., May 8, 7 p.m.

Original Quartet Original Quartet explores the roots of Andalusian music with a repertoire that includes old poems and songs from Iraq, Sephardi compositions and Indian traditional pieces, as well as modern compositions created specifically for this project. Admission is free; to RSVP visit www.spainculture.us/ city/washington-dc/.

NYU Washington DC Tue., May 15, 7:30 p.m.

Gwhyneth Chen, Piano

The legendary company brings the North American premiere of its riveting, contemporary take on the Bard’s searing tragedy to the Kennedy Center, following an acclaimed U.K. run in 2016. Tickets are $39 to $129.

Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater May 5 to 26

Washington National Opera: Candide In Leonard Bernstein’s funny, philosophical and fast-paced take on Voltaire’s biting satire, very bad things happen to very good people (and plenty of bad ones too) as a terrific ensemble cast quick-change their way through an effervescent score that includes such classic tunes as “Make Our Garden Grow” and “Glitter and Be Gay.” Tickets are $45 to $275.

Presented by Saint Luke Serbian Orthodox Church of Potomac, Md. — the epicenter of Serbian culture in the area — this three-day festival showcases traditional Serbian dishes and beverages, dance and music performances, gifts and boutique items, as well as family-friendly activities.

For information, visit serbfestdc.com.

Gwhyneth Chen is a Taiwanese-American pianist who in 1993, won the biggest cash prize in the history of piano competitions — $100,000. Then a young woman of 23, she was the youngest contestant at the Ivo Pogorelich International Piano Competition and was immediately recognized as one of the foremost pianists of her generation.

Tickets are $110, including buffet, wine; for information, visit www.embassyseries.org.

Saint Luke Serbian Orthodox Church

Twin Oaks Estate

MUSIC

Wed., May 16, 8 p.m.

Confronted with a rapidly changing world after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the looming demolition of Memphis Lee’s diner as a result of Pittsburgh’s renovation project, Memphis and his regular customers struggle to maintain their solidarity and sense of pride in August Wilson’s quintessential epic drama. Tickets are $50 to $99.

Evgeny Kissin, Piano

Arena Stage

SerbFest DC

Thu., May 3, 6:45 p.m.

Music from Mexico and Italy for Voice and Piano As part of its 2018 music series “La Música de México,” the Mexican Cultural Institute presents soprano Daniela D’Ingiullo and pianist Roberto Hidalgo for a concert of music from Mexico and Italy. This concert features works by Mexican and Italian composers from the early 20th century to today, including the world premiere of “Tres canciones de A. Machado” (1996) by Jesús Villaseñor and “Four Poems by Ezra Pound” (2017) by Juan Trigos. Admission is free; to RSVP, visit www.instituteofmexicodc.org.

Mexican Cultural Institute Sun., May 6, 7 p.m.

Zakir Hussain’s ‘Crosscurrents’ Famed both as instrumental virtuosos and as stylistic adventurers, Indian tabla maestro Zakir Hussain and bassist Dave Holland forge new and exciting connections

Evgeny Kissin’s “arm-blurring bursts of octaves, spiraling flights of finger-twisting passagework” (The New York Times) will fill the Kennedy Center Concert Hall after a two-year hiatus as the musician tackles Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. Tickets are $50 to $150.

Kennedy Center Concert Hall Fri., May 25, 7 p.m.

Schoenberg, Schubert and the Odyssey of Exile Presented by the Austrian Cultural Forum of D.C. and PostClassical Ensemble, in conjunction with the exhibition “Arnold Schoenberg: Through the Lens of Richard Fish,” this unique concert explores the condition of exile in the music of four composers, ranging from the existential estrangement of Franz Schubert’s “Wanderer” to Hanns Eisler’s wartime exile in Los Angeles. Admission is free; to RSVP visit http://acfdc.org.

Embassy of Austria

Kennedy Center Opera House Through May 6

Two Trains Running

Vietgone In this high-octane comedy, VietnameseAmerican playwright Qui Nguyen recreates (and kind of makes up) his parents’ reluctant courtship: Fresh from Saigon, they meet in an Arkansas refugee relocation camp in 1975. “Vietgone” follows these new Americans through a bewildering land in a story full of lust and heartache, cowboys and motorcycles. Tickets are $20 to $57.

Studio Theatre Through May 20

Waiting for Godot Lingering by the side of the road, killing time with hat tricks and half-remembered stories, Estragon and Vladimir dawdle through one of the greatest dramas of the 20th century. Please call for ticket information.

Shakespeare Theatre Company Through May 27

Titus Andronicus “Titus Andronicus,” from Synetic Theater’s visionary founding artistic director Paata Tsikurishvili, is lucky number 13 in the “Wordless Shakespeare” series. Tsikurishvili will sink his teeth into this revenge-driven tragedy and tell the bloody tale of Titus and Tamora with all of the fiery passion, energy and vengeance only Synetic can deliver.

Tickets start at $35.

May 12 to June 10

Synetic Theater

Saint Joan

Through May 27

Joan of Arc, from peasant stock, fights for her country and defeats the English at Orleans. She is captured and taken prisoner in Burgundy, brought before a church court, tried as a heretic, and burned at the stake — all before the age of 19. Depicted as neither witch, saint, nor madwoman in George Bernard Shaw’s retelling, Joan is but an illiterate farm girl whose focus on the individual rocks the church and state.

Tickets are $30 to $79.

Folger Theatre

1984 Scena Theatre presents “1984,” the acclaimed stage version of George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future that shows us a world where individualism is crushed, and challenging authority leads to torture, prison and death. Tickets are $35 to $45.

Atlas Performing Arts Center Through June 10

Girlfriend

Through May 13

In the Time of the Butterflies (En el tiempo de las Mariposas) In this fictionalized story, the courageous Mirabal sisters challenge the oppressive dictatorship of Gen. Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic using the code name “but-

Set in small-town Nebraska in 1993, college-bound jock Mike and self-assured but aimless Will find themselves drawn to each other. This examination of first-time love is set to the songs of Mathew Sweet’s iconic alternative-rock album “Girlfriend.”

Please call for ticket information.

Signature Theatre

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 45

WD | Culture | Spotlight

Diplomatic Spotlight

May 2018

Ambassador Insider Series with Costa Rica Costa Rican Ambassador Roman Macaya described his Central American nation’s successes, U.S. relations and his own eclectic background at The Washington Diplomat’s 10th Ambassador Insider Series (AIS), held March 22 at Ampeer Residences in Dupont Circle. A biochemist and businessman who even ran for president before becoming a diplomat, Macaya offered a unique perspective global problems such as climate change as well as domestic challenges such as attracting high-tech investments to his Central American nation. Known for its stable democracy and educated workforce, Costa Rica became the first country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish its army and has since pursued a liberal policy of universal health care and education that has made it the envy of Latin America. In addition to being a popular eco-tourist destination, Costa Rica has attracted billions of dollars in high-tech investment by Fortune 500 companies ranging from Intel to Medtronic — a trend that will only accelerate as the West Virginia-size country makes a name for itself in such diverse areas as solar energy, medical research and even aerospace technology.

Former Ambassador of Libya Ali Aujali, Ambassador of Costa Rica Roman Macaya, managing editor of The Washington Diplomat Anna Gawel and publisher of The Washing-ton Diplomat Victor Shiblie.

Ambassador of Costa Rica Roman Macaya talks to Anna Gawel, managing editor of The Washington Diplomat.

Ambassador of Costa Rica Roman Macaya.

Moderator Anna Gawel.

Shellie Purvis of Cogent Strategies and Dave Adams of Cogent Strategies.

Andrea Mendez of the Embassy of Panama; Jill Barrett, director of individual giving for Ashoka; Edona Dervisholli of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization; Erinda Aliaj of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority; Juliana Lopez of the Donovan and Mason & Rook hotels; and Alian Malek.

Michael Giacalone of the Italian Cultural Institute, Cameron Nezam of The Line hotel and Rochelle Carroll of Carroll and Associates.

46 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

Lara Aujali, former Ambassador of Libya Ali Aujali and Yamina Ennaciri of Johns Hopkins Medicine International.

Carmen Mora of the Embassy of Panama and Ambassador of Nicaragua Francisco Obadiah Campbell Hooker.

Sales manager Rod Carrasco of The Washington Diplomat, right, introduces Ambassador of Costa Rica Roman Macaya.

Miriam Campbell Hooker and Leila Beale.

Elodie Shami of the Embassy of Rwanda talks to Dina Alfaham of the UAE Embassy and managing editor of The Washington Diplomat Anna Gawel.

Spotlight | Culture | WD

Ambassador of Costa Rica Roman Macaya talks to Anna Gawel, managing editor of The Washington Diplomat.

Dina Alfaham of the UAE Embassy, Daniel Rigaux of Saul Urban and Colline Stanley.

Frank Saul, founder of Saul Urban real estate; Dina Alfaham of the UAE Embassy; Anna Gawel of The Washington Diplomat; and Daniel Rigaux of Saul Urban.

Santana Thomas, John Saman and Victor Pattianakotta of the Embassy of Indonesia.

Simon Klink of the Department of Defense, Elizabeth D’Antonio and Christopher D’Antonio of the Department of Homeland Security.

Former Ambassador of Panama to the U.N. Carlos Ruiz Hernandez and Michael Weiner of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

The Washington Diplomat managing editor Anna Gawel asks a question.

David Molina of Ward Circle Strategies, Mallory Howe of FiscalNote and Jean-Francois Orsini, CEO of DespPup LLC.

Frank Saul, founder of Saul Urban real estate, which developed Ampeer Residences and other urban apartment communities, welcomes guests.

Ben Bengura of the Embassy of Guinea asks a question.

Erinda Aliaj of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority asks a question.

Photographer Jon Kolkin, Lisa Rafkin of the University of Miami School of Medicine and nutritionist Marie Lovenheim.

Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal asks a question.

Kevin Wensing of Wensing Enterprises, embassy liaison Jan Du Plain and Dave Hansen of MBH Arbitrage.

Former Ambassador of Libya Ali Aujali.

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 47

WD | Culture | Spotlight

Diplomatic Spotlight

May 2018

Ambassador Insider Series with Armenia On April 5, Armenian Ambassador Grigor Hovhannissian discussed his country’s complex history and relations with the U.S. and its neighbors in The Washington Diplomat’s 11th Ambassador Insider Series (AIS) held at Wardman Tower, a recently reopened historic property developed

by Harry Wardman in 1928. Armenia, which was the first state in the world to adopt Christianity, saw empires come and go, falling under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and later Soviet control before regaining its independence in 1991. Yet the upheaval of the 20th century left lasting scars on this nation of 3 million people and its large diaspora. The systematic slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians during the World War I-era collapse of the Ottoman Empire continues to haunt Armenia’s relations with Turkey, while the ongoing territorial dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh has poisoned relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Relations with the U.S. are also key for the nation of 3 million, given its diaspora of half a million influential Armenians who live in America.

Publisher of The Washington Diplomat Victor Shiblie, Ambassador of Armenia Grigor Hovhannissian and managing editor of The Washington Diplomat Anna Gawel.

Ambassador of Armenia Grigor Hovhannissian shares a laugh with moderator Anna Gawel.

Kasper Zeuthen and James Barbour of the EU Delegation to the U.S.

The Washington Diplomat sales manager Rod Carrasco and Qian Ding of Westin DC City Center.

48 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

Ambassador of Armenia Grigor Hovhannissian speaks to managing editor of The Washington Diplomat Anna Gawel.

Ambassador of Serbia Djerdj Matkovic and Dan Pettine and Carly Thayer of Bulldog Public Relations.

Steve Kalan of LEVICK and Deputy Chief of Mission of the Croatian Embassy Lara Romano.

Ararat Armenian cognac.

Managing editor of The Washington Diplomat Anna Gawel and Russian Embassy Press Secretary Nikolay Lakhonin.

Helena Willar of RT Spanish, James Campbell of the Hilton Washington DC National Mall and Roxana Solano of RT America.

Ambassador of Nicaragua Francisco Obadiah Campbell Hooker and his wife Miriam Campbell Hooker.

Afedziwa Hayford of Neah Arts and Aparna Sain of Conscious Capitalism.

Spotlight | Culture | WD

Davit Janazyan of the Embassy of Armenia, Nora Carrol of Emergent Inc. and Mike Shea of GlobeScope.

Aleen Markarian Ajaman, Hugh Grindstaff, Stephanie Misar and Joan Keston of THIS for Diplomats.

JBG Smith Vice President of Residential Marketing Jannah Hobday and Wynne Anderson of JBG Smith Marketing.

Nouf Bin Dehaish of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, second from left, poses with members of the Yahweh Yahweh movement.

Ambassador of Armenia Grigor Hovhannissian speaks to managing editor of The Washington Diplomat Anna Gawel.

Nazeli Hambardzumyan of the Armenian Embassy, Anna Zakharchenko of the Russian Embassy and Lusine Shirinyan of the Armenian Embassy.

Ambassador of Serbia Djerdj Matkovic and Leila Beale.

Marc Solomon, Mandi Solomon and Cameron Kushner.

Hilary Geary, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and counselor to President Trump Kellyanne Conway attend Kuwait’s National Day reception held at Trump International Hotel.

Kuwait at Trump Hotel Hilary Geary and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross talk to Ambassador of Kuwait Salem Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah at Kuwait’s National Day reception held at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Ambassador of Libya Wafa Bugaighis and Ambassador of the League of Arab States Salah A. Sarhan attend Kuwait’s National Day reception.

Ambassador of Portugal Domingos Fezal Vital and his wife Isabel Vital attend Kuwait’s National Day reception.

Ambassador of Kosovo Vlora Çitaku and Deputy Chief of Mission of the German Embassy Boris Ruge attend Kuwait’s National Day reception.

THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 49

WD | Culture | Spotlight

Diplomatic Spotlight

New Japanese Ambassador Fêtes Cherry Blossoms

Ambassadors at AJC Seder On March 22, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) of Washington hosted its 26th annual Ambassadors’ Seder at Washington Hebrew Congregation. More than 280 ambassadors, diplomats, Capitol Hill staff and Jewish community leaders attended.

AJC Washington Past President Simeon M. Kriesberg led the Seder, with Bulgarian Ambassador Tihomir Stoytchev and Albanian Ambassador Floreta Faber speaking about their countries’ connections with the Jewish people.

May 2018

Recently appointed Japanese Ambassador Shinsuke J. Sugiyama and his wife welcomed the 2018 National Cherry Blossom Princesses to their residence on April 10 to commemorate the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which celebrates U.S.-Japanese friendship and Tokyo’s gift of 3,000 cherry trees to Washington, D.C.

PHOTOS: KAREN SAYRE, EIKON PHOTOGRAPHY

AJC Washington Board Member Leonard Bebchick and Ambassador of Mauritius Sooroojdev Phokeer.

Bulgarian Embassy Head of Trade and Commercial Office Ivo Konstantinov, Bulgarian Embassy First Secretary Stefka Yovcheva and AJC Washington Board Member Andrew Marks.

PHOTO: EMBASSY OF JAPAN

The 2018 National Cherry Blossom Princesses pose with recently appointed Japanese Ambassador Shinsuke J. Sugiyama and his wife Yoko and daughter Reina.

Barry Schmookler and Embassy of Oman Chargé d’Affaires Ahmed Al Saidi.

AJC ACCESS DC Vice President Susan Chusyd and Ambassador of Croatia Pjer Šimunović.

Ambassador of Bulgaria Tihomir Stoytchev talks to Deputy Chief of Mission of Slovenia Vladimir Kolmanič.

AJC ACCESS DC supporter Jay Laurie, Ambassador of Austria Wolfgang Waldner, Gudrun Faudon-Waldner and Barry Shmookler.

Japan’s 2018 Cherry Blossom Princess, Yoko Sugiyama, Ambassador of Japan Shinsuke J. Sugiyama, the U.S. 2018 Cherry Blossom Princess and the Sugiyamas’ daughter Reina Sugiyama, a graphic designer.

Sandy Bieber and Deputy Chief of Mission of Mexico Jose Antonio Zabalgoitia.

Ambassador of Albania Floreta Faber gives remarks about her country’s role in saving Jews during the Holocaust.

Ambassador of Togo Frédéric Edem Hegbe and AJC Washington Assistant Regional Director Susan Sloan.

AJC Washington Board Member Stephen Gell, Ambassador of Fiji Ratu Naivakarurubalavu Solo Mara and AJC Washington Board Member Robert Bajefsky.

Deputy Chief of Mission of Chile Julio Fiol, AJC Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs Director Dina Siegel Vann and Embassy of Uruguay Counselor Marcelo Magnou.

Embassy of China First Secretary Xijun Wang.

AJC Associate Executive Director for Policy and Managing Director of Government and International Affairs Jason Isaacson opens the AJC Ambassadors’ Seder with remarks.

Gabriela Bebchick, AJC Washington Board Member Leonard Bebchick and Deputy Chief of Mission of Iceland Hreinn Pálsson.

50 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

Ambassador of Zambia Ngosa Simbyakula and Ambassador of Suriname Niermala Badrising.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross speaks to guests.

Gail Weiss and Ambassador of the Bahamas Sidney Collie.

Ambassador of Argentina Fernando Oris de Roa.

Maryland State Representative Jamie Raskin and Maryland State Senator Cheryl Kagan.

Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta gives a toast.

Spotlight | Culture | WD

Ross at Meridian

Nowruz at Meridian

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross spoke to ambassadors about the Trump administration’s trade policy on March 23 as part of the Meridian International Center’s “Insights at Meridian” series. One day after the administration announced a plan to impose up to $60 billion in new tariffs on China primarily because of its intellectual property practices, Ross underscored the need for fair trade by pointing out, for example, that U.S. cars face substantially higher tariffs in China and the European Union. At the same time, he sought to debunk fears of an oncoming trade war.

On March 20, the Meridian International Center, along with envoys from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, celebrated Nowruz, which falls on the first day of spring and serves as a symbol of new beginnings and the renewal of nature.

The Embassy of Azerbaijan displays an information booth at the Meridian International Center’s Nowruz Spring New Year reception.

PHOTOS: STEPHEN BOBB PHOTOGRAPHY / MERIDIAN INTERNATIONAL CENTER

Former Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez interviews Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

PHOTOS: STEPHEN BOBB PHOTOGRAPHY / MERIDIAN INTERNATIONAL CENTER

Meridian President and CEO Stuart Holliday; Ambassador of Azerbaijan Elin Suleymanov, Ambassador of Kyrgyzstan Kadyr M. Toktogulov, Ambassador of Kazakhstan Erzhan Kazykhanov, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of Tajikistan Sharipov Abumuhsin, Ambassador of Turkmenistan Meret Bairamovich Orazov and Chargé d’Affaires of the Embassy of Uzbekistan Kamol Mukhtarov.

CNN’s Michelle Kosinski attends the Nowruz reception.

Ambassador of Kazakhstan Erzhan Kazykhanov poses with a dance troupe from his country.

Ambassadors and deputy heads of mission listen to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross talks with Ambassador of Oman Hunaina Sultan Ahmed Al Mughairy, and Ambassador of Costa Rica Román Macaya.

The Nowruz celebration featured cuisine, cultural performances, and arts and craft displays from Central Asia.

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THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018 | 51

WD | Culture

Diplomatic Spotlight Bangladeshi Independence

Manolo Blahnik at Czech

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert joined Ambassador of Bangladesh Mohammad Ziauddin to celebrate Bangladesh’s 48th Independence and National Day at the embassy on March 28. “My participation in tonight’s event has special meaning for me as my trip to Bangladesh last November was my first overseas visit as the department of state’s spokesperson,” Nauert said, noting the country’s efforts to shelter Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar and its stepped-up involvement in U.N. peacekeeping forces.

PHOTOS: EMBASSY OF BANGLADESH

Czech Ambassador Hynek Kmoníček and his wife Indira Gumarova welcomed guests to their residence to celebrate renowned Czech-Spanish designer Manolo Blahnik, whose shoes earned worldwide recognition on the show “Sex and the City.” The event also featured a screening of “Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards,” which offers an intimate look at the life and creativity of the man whose striking, intricately crafted shoes have adorned the feet of everyone from ambassadors to celebrities.

Ambassador of Bangladesh Mohammad Ziauddin and State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert and Ambassador of Bangladesh Mohammad Ziauddin place flowers at a statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, founder of the nation.

Shoes designed by Manolo Blahnik, who was born in Spain but has Czech roots, were displayed at the Czech Residence.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert and Ambassador of Bangladesh Mohammad Ziauddin.

May 2018

Czech Ambassador Hynek Kmoníček and his wife Indira Gumarova.

Czech Ambassador Hynek Kmoníček talks to Marla Beck and Barry Beck.

A display case shows renditions of Manolo Blahnik shoes made of sugar by the Czech Embassy chef.

Taiwanese Fashion Show The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office to the U.S. (TECRO) held a fashion show titled “Beauty Power – Time Corridor of Taiwan’s Women’s Fashion, 1888-2018,” to commemorate the 130th anniversary of its private estate Twin Oaks. The evening focused not only on fashion, but also on women’s rights in Taiwan, which in January 2016 elected its first female president, President Tsai Ing-wen, and where almost 40 percent of their legislature is female.

New U.S. Ambassador to OAS

PHOTOS: TECRO

Sherry Sung, wife of TECRO Representative Stanley Kao, fifth from right, poses with the models.

Carlos Trujillo, ambassador and permanent representative of the U.S. to the Organization of American States (OAS) presents his credentials to OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro at the group’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., on April 5.

Ting Chang, a TECO diplomat, models an all-recyclable dress

by Pou-Yun Hsiao of Tung Fang Design University.

PHOTOS: JUAN MANUEL HERRERA / OAS

Guests welcomes Carlos Trujillo, America’s new permanent representative to the OAS.

OAS Assistant SecretaryGeneral Nestor Mendez, Permanent Representative of the U.S. to the OAS Carlos Trujillo, OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro and Permanent Representative of Colombia to the OAS Andrés González Díaz, who holds the chair of the OAS Permanent Council.

52 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | MAY 2018

Models (top) and designers (bottom) pose for a photo.

Two models wear early Taiwanese fashion designed

by Pou-Yun Hsiao.

Valley … and also in Europe and in Asia.”

Techplomacy

BENEFITS OF BIG TECH

CONTINUED • PAGE 19

although he said a company should be able to protect its users’ best interests while still turning a profit. “I don’t think that it should be impossible to set in motion certain checks and balances where you avoid the kind of breaches that we’ve seen lately. But of course there is a bigger question around this, which is how much data do you give away voluntarily that can be exploited for commercial reasons?”

He said Europe’s GDPR rules are meant to address precisely that dilemma by allowing consumers to own their data and “basically undo what you’ve done in the past if you don’t want that information to be available for commercial opportunities or for promotion and marketing.”

He also said the GDPR framework can be used as a launching pad to examine the regulatory implications of the Cambridge Analytica debacle. And despite skepticism that tech companies can voluntarily regulate themselves, Klynge says it’s not out of the question, especially because privacy breaches erode trust in their products, which in turn cuts into their profits.

“I actually believe that we’ll see a new way of forward-leaning thought in the tech sector.

That’s certainly what I’m hearing in Silicon

Bolton CONTINUED • PAGE 13

March 23 article.

“The fact is that he is not alone in shaping these decisions,” Cordesman said. “There’s a new team coming into place and they will redefine each other’s views over time.”

When it comes to potential war with North Korea, “the actuality on the ground and the consequences of action are going to outweigh his bombastic comments,” Gnehm told The Diplomat.

Gnehm also foresees an “ultimate clash” between Trump and Bolton, whom he describes as “two strong personalities,” as a real possibility.

Trump bristles when members of his administration are in the limelight, Gnehm pointed out, but Bolton is unabashedly outspoken in his op-eds and frequent TV appearances as a former Fox News contributor. Moreover, he has diverged from Trump by praising NATO and declaring Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections to be a “true act of war.”

Bolton is also likely to clash with Defense Secretary Mattis, Gnehm said, and Bolton could use his “penchant for undermining those he disagrees with” to undercut Mattis.

Many observers say the ultimate key to Bolton’s success, or whether his head will be the next to roll, is how well he gets along with his unpredictable boss. On that front, Bolton has said that his past opinions as a private citizen are just that — in the past. “The important thing is what the president says and

But Klynge cautions that Cambridge Analytica and other scandals should not overshadow the tremendous potential of technology to improve our world. “[M]y concern with these cases is that it is extremely easy to tip the balance in regards to public opinion … and I think that would be a mistake because we’re basically at the threshold of seeing new technologies doing a lot of good for humanity and solving some very, very complicated issues that we haven’t been able to solve in the last 20, 30 or 40 years.”

In particular, he cites health care as a prime example of technology being on the cusp of revolutionizing the field.

“If you look at what machine learning, big data and artificial intelligence will be able to do in giving better preventative care and advice, better treatment, better diagnostics, more precise medication and surgical procedures, I think that holds enormous potential in solving in some of the very, very big challenges around cancer and other diseases that we’re fighting on a global level,” he said.

And despite the death of a pedestrian who was struck by a self-driving Uber car — a “tragedy” that Klynge said illustrates the need for more controlled testing — “I think it’s also just as important to point out the fact that human drivers are certainly not flawless ei-

the advice I give him,” he said, noting that he will use his bureaucratic know-how to implement the president’s decisions.

“He is effective. He’s done some good things,” Manning conceded, citing Bolton’s role in helping to found the Proliferation Security Initiative, an effort to disrupt the black market trade in weapons of mass destruction components.

Countryman also cited the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism as an example of the positive contributions Bolton has made to U.S. national security and nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

But Manning argues that while Bolton may make some skillful tactical decisions, it is the “big strategic issues like North Korea that he gets wrong.”

Countryman agrees. “Mr. Bolton has damaged the U.S. national security in his approaches to Iraq, to China, to Russia, to Iran and to North Korea,” Countryman said. “He has learned nothing from his failures in those areas.”

Manning believes this stems from an outdated foreign policy mindset that is better suited to the 1950s, when the U.S. was better able to set the international agenda.

Now, with regional actors like Iran and Saudi Arabia at odds and a rising China competing with the U.S., Manning says the U.S. cannot dictate foreign policy the way it once did.

“It’s a whole mindset that influences things across the board and I think it’s really out of touch,” Manning said of Bolton’s overall strategy views.

“I hope I’m wrong,” he added.

“But he would surprise me.” WD Ryan R. Migeed (@RyanMigeed) is a freelance writer based in Boston.

ther.” He noted that drivers cause thousands of fatalities each year, while technological upgrades like sensors and cameras have quietly made driving safer.

The ultimate goal, he said, is to “constantly focus on mitigating all the risks but at the same time maximizing the opportunities … and that goes to the core of what Denmark’s tech diplomacy is all about.”

“Our belief in Denmark is that new technology will bring more opportunities than challenges our way, and that also applies to the job market. It’s evident that you’ll potentially see a massive disruption of the labor market and you’ll need to re-educate and transform a lot of the jobs we have today into new jobs.

But we actually have an optimistic belief that we’ll have, on balance, a lot of new jobs in new sectors,” he told us.

“But we don’t know. I think that’s the honest truth. We don’t know, but I have a prime minister who has a saying that you want to walk into the future looking forward rather than backward. It’s one of the reasons why he set up something called the Disruption Council in Denmark, with public-private participation where they are looking at these issues. What kind of jobs will artificial intelligence remove? What jobs would be created?

How can we actually bring that production to Denmark or other countries,” and how can the private and public sectors team up to transform education “because that will really

define whether you can be a winner of technology or whether you will trail behind. But if we boil all of it down, we are optimistic that it will be positive.”

Regardless of the pros and cons, Klynge insists that techplomacy is here to stay — and that embassies around the world, big and small, need to accept it. “There is no other way in diplomacy today than to use these platforms. When you are a country of our size, it’s basically a gift from above that you can … target communications in a way where you reach a lot of people,” he said.

And that’s why he’s confident Denmark won’t be the only one reaching out to Silicon Valley. “Whether they will be called a tech ambassador or it will be set up exactly like we’re doing, I don’t know. But I can tell you by the amount of interest and by the number of invitations we’re getting to visit capitals all over the world, I’m convinced that we won’t be the last ones. And that’s something we really welcome because it needs more than a small country like Denmark to have this formalized dialogue with the tech companies to put technology on the international agenda.

So having more people at the table is going to be important. It’s a party that everybody is going to be invited to.” WD Anna Gawel (@diplomatnews) is the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat.

Diplomatic Spouses CONTINUED • PAGE 38

grandmother and aunt to Rome, where we got my dress; London, where we got my going-away outfit; and France, where we picked up perfume and other wedding gifts. When we were married, we had 250 people at our wedding — just immediate family.”

Today, their own family is quite large. They have two girls, both of whom attend the British School of Washington: 12-year-old Minwa and 9-year-old Lulwa, who is named after AlKhalifa’s grandmother.

“The name means pearl,” she noted.

The big surprise came when AlKhalifa was pregnant again — with triplets. “I was huge and we have twins in the family but we didn’t expect triplets,” she said. “I had 14 hours of labor, then a C-section with the same doctor who delivered the girls. My husband was with me the whole time. The three boys are 20 months old now.”

The final family members are Sahara and Sultana, two golden retrievers who are also twins. “We got them when they were puppies,” she said.

“My husband was afraid to tell me when he found out he was going to the United States as ambassador.

It was a big surprise. I had just had the boys and they were only six months old.”

Today, the busy mother loves spending time with her children but has found ways to carve out relaxation time for herself. “I do deep breathing, Pilates and take long walks on my own. Sometimes my husband and I go to work out together. It’s nice because no one recognizes us.” And if there is any time left, she loves to watch “vintage movies” and go shopping.

Art, of course, is also important to her. She still paints and wants to set up her own private art gallery at the residence, where paintings by some of Bahrain’s top artists will be exhibited.

One of the reasons she likes Washington is “the vibrant arts and culture scene with museums and galleries on every corner. It is a small city … but larger than Boston, where we both went to school,” she said.

“The U.S. in itself is such a large and fascinating

Shaikha Aisha AlKhalifa and her husband, Bahraini Ambassador Shaikh Abdullah bin Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, pose with their two daughters: 12-year-old Minwa and 9-year-old Lulwa, who is named after AlKhalifa’s grandmother.

country. Each state has its own traits and exploring the not-so-obvious regions of the U.S. is what I look forward to, and we can’t forget Disneyland!”

Although she is here with her husband and children and has help, she said that “being away from family and friends can sometimes be hard. Then there is the adaptation to change, letting go and, most of all, the uncertainty.”

“My family comes with a lot of baggage — plus we have to move the girls to new schools. The boys speak mostly Arabic and have less exposure to their own history and culture. Once one has established him or herself in a place and started to get comfortable, it might be time to go. People in the diplomatic corps are uncertain of when the time will be up or if there is any political decision that might affect their presence,” she said.

“I think ambassadors’ spouses should be recognized as co-ambassadors because they are at every event, spending as much effort, time and energy as the ambassador, if not more in some cases,” she added. But AlKhalifa said she relishes her primary job, which is the “promotion of Bahrain in the best possible light and exposing as many people as I can to my culture.” WD Gail Scott is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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