By Prof. Michael Brenner 3rd January 2009 Muslim India
The Obama administration’s foreign policy promises to be little changed from that of its predecessor. This holds for its underlying conceptions of American interests and the country’s place in the world. Modes of address toward other governments may be less peremptory, tactics less aggressive. All indications suggest, however, point to more continuity than change in the fundamentals. Those who excepted a shift in thinking about the intersecting, combustible crises in the Greater Middle East from Palestine to Afghanistan are to be disappointed. The grievous implications will register as well in South Asia. What is the basis for this pessimistic assessment? Barack Obama’s appointments to senior cabinet positions is one sources of clues. The President-elect’s public statements, dating back to the campaign, provide the other. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates as continuing Secretary of State, and General Jones as National Security Adviser share one critical trait: none has ever questioned the strategic premises for the United States’ aggressive interventions or for unqualified backing of Israel’s hard-line policies. The same can be said in regard to Washington’s confrontational approach toward Iran. The last is the key to the region’s future, as I discuss below. What are these strategic premises? They can be summarized as follows:
1. The United States faces grave threats, originating in the Greater Middle East, that endanger core security and economic interests, e.g. transnational terrorist groups, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by hostile regimes, rogue states and the prospect of regional conflicts.
2. These threats can only be dealt with through assertive American actions, political or military. The involvement of others is only meaningful when oriented and orchestrated by Washington.
3. The long-term solution is the fostering of prosperous democracies responsive to their citizens needs. Here, too, American leadership is indispensable.
4. The American engagements in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf must be maintained until a resolution – as defined by the United States – is achieved.
All the principals who form the new foreign policy team, including President Obama and Vice-President Biden ascribe to these postulates. Criticisms of current policies that were voiced during the campaign by Obama, Biden and Clinton focused on execution. Execution referred to excessive unilateralism as well as the occupation of Iraq. The record shows that only Obama opposed the decision to go to war. There is even a caveat on that point, since the opposition consisted only of public remarks made while an Illinois state senator in Springfield. As a U.S. Senate candidate running in the fall of 2004, he stated that overall the war was being managed as best as reasonably could be expected. On Iran, much is made of Obama’s declaration in March of this year that we should not be afraid to engage Tehran in direct negotiations or set onerous preconditions. It has not been repeated with such specificity since then. We should note that the person most forceful in pushing a revision of Iran policy, as well as redirection of thinking about Palestine, was Zbigniew Brzezinski who is no longer a confidant of Obama. We should also remind ourselves that Robert Gates has been unfailing hawkish on dealing with Iran. Just a few weeks ago, he explicitly stated that Iran’s leaders were not credible negotiating partners since their unalleviated hostility toward the United States had been demonstrated by the rejection of several American overtures over the years. This distortion that conveniently omits the serious Iranian demarche of April 2003 made through the Swiss Ambassador to Iran suggests that Mr. Gates will not be an advocate of any major policy reversal under a new president.*
Other qualified persons were available had Obama seen a need for a root-and-branch reassessment of the country’s strategic frame of reference for the Greater Middle East. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican from the heartland state of Nebraska, is the outstanding individual. He has been a consistent skeptic of the Iraq adventure, a sophisticated analyst of the region’s intersecting problems, and an advocate of diplomacy as the means to deal with Iran. Hagel is known as a thoughtful, intellectually rigorous man whose discourses on American foreign policy receive close, respectful attention. Yet, he has never seriously considered for a senior post in the Obama administration. That speaks volumes about the president-elects high degree of comfort with the prevailing conventional wisdom and its proponents.
At the end of the day, any reformulation of American policy depends on President Obama. Yet, there is no sign that he has a different understanding of America’s role in the Greater Middle East from that of the Washington foreign policy establishment generally that has been supportive of the Bush strategy. Nor is it clear where such an understanding might come from given the unanimity of views among his foreign policy team. There is always the hope that new circumstances and new pressures, domestic and international, may crystallize innovative thinking in the future. But Obama does not enjoy the luxury of time since Iran’s refusal to mothball its nuclear facilities under strict international monitoring will force a decision of some kind.
Barack Obama and his appointees live in intellectual echo chamber where no one dares utter discomforting truths. Witness to universal failure to recognize the definitive strategic defeat that the United States has suffered in Iraq as embodied in the agreed Status Of Forces Treaty. Washington got nothing in the way of operational autonomy that it had demanded. In effect, the Iraqi leadership is showing the United States the door. Regionally, the big winner is Iran which will have intimate relations with any future Iraqi government. Its greatly strengthened hand makes Tehran less inclined to yield to Western demands or American intimidation. These cardinal facts of strategic life in the Gulf go unremarked in the American media, foreign policy circles or most certainly among Obama’s foreign policy team.
How do we explain so little change from a man who made change the leitmotif of his candidacy and who is inheriting a set of failed policies? We must bear in mind who Barack Obama actually is.
Who is Barack Obama? – And How To Deal With Him:- The question is simpler to answer than it seems. There is nothing of the exotic about him, contrary to the popular discourse, except for a childhood background that he assiduously has relegated to an outgrown past. A Kenyan father and the Jakarta sojourn in childhood have left few visible marks on his character or attitudes. More fruitful for understanding who he is and what he is about is the portrait of a highly ambitious politician with the self-assurance that stems from a stellar Ivy League record, a wife to match and early electoral successes. His ‘blackness’ is not part of his core identity. The only apparent residue of his experience as a black is strong penchant for ironing out all ascriptive differences in his field of vision, e.g. ‘partisanship.’
Obama’s autobiography is easily misread. He did not visit his father’s family in Kenya in search of his roots. There are no signs that he sought to integrate Africa into his persona.
Similarly, he has maintained few ties to Indonesia and takes little interest in the country, except for a close relationship with his half-sister long resident in the United States. In truth, he is not a cosmopolitan person. His travels overseas have been limited, before or since entering the Senate. Since his Jakarta days, he has not lived abroad. His knowledge of foreign affairs is correspondingly limited despite having chaired the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe. Superior intelligence along with legal training makes him a ‘quick study’ who can readily absorb the main points of a situation without much knowledge or understanding in depth. Facile speaking skills and social ease are complementary traits that help create an impression of urbane worldliness. Obama is conservative, in the traditional sense of the term We should bear in mind that the strongest influences on him during his formative years were a mother and maternal grandparents who were sliced white bread Kansans. Obama’s ambition is not inspired by any cause or purpose. The themes he enunciates are ones of national unity – as a desirable end in itself as well as a precondition to meeting collective challenges. None in this category stand out in his writings or speeches. Little if anything in the roiled public life of America seems to anger him or even irk him. At a time of multiple crises – constitutional, economic, and in the nation’s foreign dealings – he keeps his emotional distance. It is hard to imagine him getting worked up about any of the developments in American society or attacks on the body politic that so deeply dismay some others In all respects, Obama is very much a man of his times. Weak or absent convictions, dispassion even about grievous wrongs, incapacity for moral outrage, quiet acceptance of the precept to put self first – if not quite the measure of all things, a natural egoism – all the hallmarks of contemporary American society. In short, Obama is a messiah without mission or message.
The Obama administration’s foreign policy promises to be little changed from that of its predecessor. This holds for its underlying conceptions of American interests and the country’s place in the world. Modes of address toward other governments may be less peremptory, tactics less aggressive. All indications suggest, however, point to more continuity than change in the fundamentals. Those who excepted a shift in thinking about the intersecting, combustible crises in the Greater Middle East from Palestine to Afghanistan are to be disappointed. The grievous implications will register as well in South Asia. What is the basis for this pessimistic assessment? Barack Obama’s appointments to senior cabinet positions is one sources of clues. The President-elect’s public statements, dating back to the campaign, provide the other. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates as continuing Secretary of State, and General Jones as National Security Adviser share one critical trait: none has ever questioned the strategic premises for the United States’ aggressive interventions or for unqualified backing of Israel’s hard-line policies. The same can be said in regard to Washington’s confrontational approach toward Iran. The last is the key to the region’s future, as I discuss below. What are these strategic premises? They can be summarized as follows:
1. The United States faces grave threats, originating in the Greater Middle East, that endanger core security and economic interests, e.g. transnational terrorist groups, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by hostile regimes, rogue states and the prospect of regional conflicts.
2. These threats can only be dealt with through assertive American actions, political or military. The involvement of others is only meaningful when oriented and orchestrated by Washington.
3. The long-term solution is the fostering of prosperous democracies responsive to their citizens needs. Here, too, American leadership is indispensable.
4. The American engagements in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf must be maintained until a resolution – as defined by the United States – is achieved.
All the principals who form the new foreign policy team, including President Obama and Vice-President Biden ascribe to these postulates. Criticisms of current policies that were voiced during the campaign by Obama, Biden and Clinton focused on execution. Execution referred to excessive unilateralism as well as the occupation of Iraq. The record shows that only Obama opposed the decision to go to war. There is even a caveat on that point, since the opposition consisted only of public remarks made while an Illinois state senator in Springfield. As a U.S. Senate candidate running in the fall of 2004, he stated that overall the war was being managed as best as reasonably could be expected. On Iran, much is made of Obama’s declaration in March of this year that we should not be afraid to engage Tehran in direct negotiations or set onerous preconditions. It has not been repeated with such specificity since then. We should note that the person most forceful in pushing a revision of Iran policy, as well as redirection of thinking about Palestine, was Zbigniew Brzezinski who is no longer a confidant of Obama. We should also remind ourselves that Robert Gates has been unfailing hawkish on dealing with Iran. Just a few weeks ago, he explicitly stated that Iran’s leaders were not credible negotiating partners since their unalleviated hostility toward the United States had been demonstrated by the rejection of several American overtures over the years. This distortion that conveniently omits the serious Iranian demarche of April 2003 made through the Swiss Ambassador to Iran suggests that Mr. Gates will not be an advocate of any major policy reversal under a new president.*
Other qualified persons were available had Obama seen a need for a root-and-branch reassessment of the country’s strategic frame of reference for the Greater Middle East. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican from the heartland state of Nebraska, is the outstanding individual. He has been a consistent skeptic of the Iraq adventure, a sophisticated analyst of the region’s intersecting problems, and an advocate of diplomacy as the means to deal with Iran. Hagel is known as a thoughtful, intellectually rigorous man whose discourses on American foreign policy receive close, respectful attention. Yet, he has never seriously considered for a senior post in the Obama administration. That speaks volumes about the president-elects high degree of comfort with the prevailing conventional wisdom and its proponents.
At the end of the day, any reformulation of American policy depends on President Obama. Yet, there is no sign that he has a different understanding of America’s role in the Greater Middle East from that of the Washington foreign policy establishment generally that has been supportive of the Bush strategy. Nor is it clear where such an understanding might come from given the unanimity of views among his foreign policy team. There is always the hope that new circumstances and new pressures, domestic and international, may crystallize innovative thinking in the future. But Obama does not enjoy the luxury of time since Iran’s refusal to mothball its nuclear facilities under strict international monitoring will force a decision of some kind.
Barack Obama and his appointees live in intellectual echo chamber where no one dares utter discomforting truths. Witness to universal failure to recognize the definitive strategic defeat that the United States has suffered in Iraq as embodied in the agreed Status Of Forces Treaty. Washington got nothing in the way of operational autonomy that it had demanded. In effect, the Iraqi leadership is showing the United States the door. Regionally, the big winner is Iran which will have intimate relations with any future Iraqi government. Its greatly strengthened hand makes Tehran less inclined to yield to Western demands or American intimidation. These cardinal facts of strategic life in the Gulf go unremarked in the American media, foreign policy circles or most certainly among Obama’s foreign policy team.
How do we explain so little change from a man who made change the leitmotif of his candidacy and who is inheriting a set of failed policies? We must bear in mind who Barack Obama actually is.
Who is Barack Obama? – And How To Deal With Him:- The question is simpler to answer than it seems. There is nothing of the exotic about him, contrary to the popular discourse, except for a childhood background that he assiduously has relegated to an outgrown past. A Kenyan father and the Jakarta sojourn in childhood have left few visible marks on his character or attitudes. More fruitful for understanding who he is and what he is about is the portrait of a highly ambitious politician with the self-assurance that stems from a stellar Ivy League record, a wife to match and early electoral successes. His ‘blackness’ is not part of his core identity. The only apparent residue of his experience as a black is strong penchant for ironing out all ascriptive differences in his field of vision, e.g. ‘partisanship.’
Obama’s autobiography is easily misread. He did not visit his father’s family in Kenya in search of his roots. There are no signs that he sought to integrate Africa into his persona.
Similarly, he has maintained few ties to Indonesia and takes little interest in the country, except for a close relationship with his half-sister long resident in the United States. In truth, he is not a cosmopolitan person. His travels overseas have been limited, before or since entering the Senate. Since his Jakarta days, he has not lived abroad. His knowledge of foreign affairs is correspondingly limited despite having chaired the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe. Superior intelligence along with legal training makes him a ‘quick study’ who can readily absorb the main points of a situation without much knowledge or understanding in depth. Facile speaking skills and social ease are complementary traits that help create an impression of urbane worldliness. Obama is conservative, in the traditional sense of the term We should bear in mind that the strongest influences on him during his formative years were a mother and maternal grandparents who were sliced white bread Kansans. Obama’s ambition is not inspired by any cause or purpose. The themes he enunciates are ones of national unity – as a desirable end in itself as well as a precondition to meeting collective challenges. None in this category stand out in his writings or speeches. Little if anything in the roiled public life of America seems to anger him or even irk him. At a time of multiple crises – constitutional, economic, and in the nation’s foreign dealings – he keeps his emotional distance. It is hard to imagine him getting worked up about any of the developments in American society or attacks on the body politic that so deeply dismay some others In all respects, Obama is very much a man of his times. Weak or absent convictions, dispassion even about grievous wrongs, incapacity for moral outrage, quiet acceptance of the precept to put self first – if not quite the measure of all things, a natural egoism – all the hallmarks of contemporary American society. In short, Obama is a messiah without mission or message.
Implications
:- What would Obama as President of the United States look like? Certain traits seem highly likely to be on display:
1. Obama is, and will continue to be a deliberate decision-maker and policymaker.
1. Obama is, and will continue to be a deliberate decision-maker and policymaker.
2. That has been a trademark of his campaign. There is nothing impetuous about the man.
3. Improvisation is not in his nature. He prefers to follow a script, however relaxed he is in inter-personal dealings. When presented with an unexpected event, he tends to react with mild irritation. The apropos comment does not spring to mind. That was evident in his reaction to the financial crisis – a bland call for a bipartisan declaration with John McCain
4. Temperamentally, Obama is better suited to formulating policy and orchestrating its execution than he is to crisis management. In the latter instance, his instinct will be to slow down the clock to whatever extent he can.
5. He will be deliberate in making up his mind, but stubborn in holding to a position once he does. Obama’s numerous reversals of policy statements in the weeks after the primaries, and since his election, is not indicative of indecisiveness. He simply was playing campaign politics by offering views with little conviction behind them – even though the matters were consequential, e.g. Iraq, FISA. Commitments as President will be of a different order. In contrast to a narcissistic Bill Clinton, he does not expect the world to give him endless ‘do-overs.’
6. His acute, superior intelligence coupled to a desire to be in intellectual control will make him a hands-on President – once he overcomes an initial period of disorientation. Obama is stubborn in defending those policies in which he has invested something of himself; witness the belief that ‘winning’ in Afghanistan is a crucial national interest. It follows that the time when others, including other governments, may be able to shape his thinking is before his policy preferences crystallize.
7. Obama enters the White House with wide popular support and goodwill. His trademark elevated, above the fray rhetoric is one reason. He will have no specific mandate, though, apart from doing something about health care. His popularity will be based mainly on his personality and his being non-Bush. On foreign policy, the dispositions of public opinion are clear: do something to end the Iraq imbroglio but don’t do anything that embarrasses the U.S.; pursue a more multilateral tack but don’t forget American exceptionalism and safeguard our right to take action as we see fit; steer clear of open-ended nation-building projects, except where they create bulwarks against terrorists – e.g. Afghanistan; spent less money abroad, we need it at home; make us popular in the world again. Not much guidance there on how to untangle our multiple, intersecting dilemmas in the Greater Middle East.
8. Failure to raise the fundamental issues of interest and capability embedded in America’s Middle East engagements in the public discourse means digging a deeper hole. Obama is anything but a heroic figure; he instinctively avoids doing anything contentious. He will be handicapped further by: (1) the absence of an Iraq debate that gets beyond calendars; (2) the utter lack of strategic perspective; (3) the consonant inability of the American public to understand the truly significant choices and trade-offs to be made; and (4) a diplomacy hamstrung by the precipitous loss of American credibility and moral authority.
9. An Obama administration is unprepared for any crisis that might arise from the United States’ multiple engagements in the region - unprepared intellectually, politically and diplomatically. His selection of advisers who cluster around the conventional wisdom is a primary reason. Obama’s superficial understanding of regional matters, manifest in the former, is the other reason.
10. Obama will move slowly on Iraq where he will follow the current Bush policy line. That includes: a slow steady drawdown of troops, pressuring the Iraqis to permit a continued large American military presence; and ignoring the real prospect of renewed civil war as the al-Maliki government moves to suppress the Sunni Awakening Councils and to curb Kurdish independence. Neither he nor his advisors have any compelling fresh ideas; they have not rethought the premises of the American engagement in Mesopotamia or linked it a strategic plan for the region. They believe that the ‘surge’ was a great strategic success, not just a tactical move whose marginal effects were inflated by change in other factors in the equation. Were civil strife in Iraq to grow, he would be at a loss to know what to do. The superficiality of Obama’s thinking about Iraq was evident the first week in September by his reply to a FOX NEWS interviewer about ‘the surge.’ B.O.: “It’s been successful beyond our wildest dreams” – no Awakening Councils, no Iran-induced Mahdi Army stand-down, no unresolved simmering sectarian political conflicts, no $1 trillion investment in a war without cause, no terrorist invigorated, no ‘what are we still doing there?’ and what strategic ends are served by our staying the course?
11. On Afghanistan, here too he will follow the Bush line of increasing markedly American troop levels while attacking Taliban/al-Qaeda elements across the border in Pakistan. He already has pronounced his intention to shift forces from Iraq to Afghanistan – as was revealed on December 20. Obama genuinely believes that vital national interests are at stake in the piedmont of the Hindu Kush and, by implication, in adjacent Pakistan. Were the situation to deteriorate within the country and/or in relations with Pakistan, he would be at sea.
12. Obama he will be feeling his way on foreign policy generally. Most important, getting out of Iraq with pride and interests more or less intact depends on regional agreements/understandings which will take time to mature – especially in terms of a modus vivendi with Iran. Iran should be his number 1 priority and his most demanding challenge. It is not self-evident, though, that he will move quickly unless forced to do so by dint of circumstance.
13. Orchestrated opposition to a serious diplomatic initiative is mounting. None of Obama’s close advisors are known to favor it. A grand bargain with Iran is the precondition for containing the effects of whatever happens in Iraq - none of which will be great, and could get pretty nasty. Were there a strategic understanding about the Gulf among the U.S., Iran, Saudi Arabia, et al., it wouldn’t make much difference what mess Iraq is in. In other words, Iraq is now the dependent variable and Iran the independent variable. This is one of the critical ideas the Obama people have to get in their heads in order to make sense of the intricate linkages there, and above all to engage Iran quickly so as not to get pushed into a corner by the next round of reports about its nuclear progress. There are no signs that they have done so.
* As to Pakistan/India, the Obama administration views it through two optics: its strategy for victory in Afghanistan; and its worry about a war between nuclear powers. Hence the incentive to mediate a settlement on Kashmir. It is unclear what he is ready to invest in that effort – even less the chances of success. In the wider context of the emerging global strategy, a cooling of passions via a prolonged diplomatic process would suffice since it would be seen as freeing Pakistan’s military and political resources for deployment against the forces of Islamic extremism.
* Nothing will change vis a vis Israel/Palestine – except, perhaps, for some cosmetics.
* On Russia, Obama will do some huffing-and-puffing in order to buffer himself from Republican charges of being weak on America’s enemies. Obama will avoid serious confrontation, though, and seek ways to work with Moscow.
What Can Other Governments Do?
What Can Other Governments Do?
The short answer is: ‘not much.’ The United States is too big and too insular to be moved by the well-intentioned thoughts and actions of others.
Still, there is room for influence at the margins. This is especially so with a foreign affairs neophyte who is inclined to favor change from the Bush stasis, and who is truly interested in working with other countries. What could count is helping to create circumstances conducive to Obama’s taking the steps in the direction he already is inclined to go re Iran. That is to say, to move faster and further than cautionary instincts and constraints will incline him to do.
General Suggestions:-
Still, there is room for influence at the margins. This is especially so with a foreign affairs neophyte who is inclined to favor change from the Bush stasis, and who is truly interested in working with other countries. What could count is helping to create circumstances conducive to Obama’s taking the steps in the direction he already is inclined to go re Iran. That is to say, to move faster and further than cautionary instincts and constraints will incline him to do.
General Suggestions:-
Speak candidly and openly about how ‘you’ interpret problems, what the past mistakes were – by the US and regional states, what your threat assessments and priorities are, AND what ‘you’ are able and willing to do.
Remember that while Obama will be ‘reachable’ through his trusted senior advisers, he will make all the decisions based on his own understanding. Now, that understanding is nebulous. In order to have any influence on shaping it, it is essential to engage him before those dispositions crystallize into doctrines and strategies.
Policy-making positions will be staffed by the usual combination of experienced professionals and upwardly mobile newcomers Diplomatic experience in particular will vary greatly. Some officials will be very competent, some fumblers. Some will be comfortable dealing with foreigners based upon extensive relations while others will mask their uneasiness by assertiveness and a self-important manner. All this is predictable from recent history. Recent history also says that a key is gaining access to those policy-makers who understand ‘you’ and the issues - without neglecting, obviously, those with official dossiers.
Michele Obama will be a powerful influence. Unlike Hillary, she does not want to run things. She wants her husband to succeed. The essence of her advice always will be: be true to your self and convictions. In truth, though, there is not much ‘self’ and convictions there when it comes to foreign policy. Still, she will urge honesty, directness and ideals.
Bear in mind that the United States government is a two-headed creature; it is essential to ‘work’ Congress – even when both branches are controlled by Democrats. There will be no repeat of the ‘Supreme Soviet’ phenomenon seen under the Republicans.
Never lose sight of the fact that ‘your’ ultimate audience is American opinion. It is also Obama’s ultimate point of reference.
Michael BRENNER
December 20, 2008
Remember that while Obama will be ‘reachable’ through his trusted senior advisers, he will make all the decisions based on his own understanding. Now, that understanding is nebulous. In order to have any influence on shaping it, it is essential to engage him before those dispositions crystallize into doctrines and strategies.
Policy-making positions will be staffed by the usual combination of experienced professionals and upwardly mobile newcomers Diplomatic experience in particular will vary greatly. Some officials will be very competent, some fumblers. Some will be comfortable dealing with foreigners based upon extensive relations while others will mask their uneasiness by assertiveness and a self-important manner. All this is predictable from recent history. Recent history also says that a key is gaining access to those policy-makers who understand ‘you’ and the issues - without neglecting, obviously, those with official dossiers.
Michele Obama will be a powerful influence. Unlike Hillary, she does not want to run things. She wants her husband to succeed. The essence of her advice always will be: be true to your self and convictions. In truth, though, there is not much ‘self’ and convictions there when it comes to foreign policy. Still, she will urge honesty, directness and ideals.
Bear in mind that the United States government is a two-headed creature; it is essential to ‘work’ Congress – even when both branches are controlled by Democrats. There will be no repeat of the ‘Supreme Soviet’ phenomenon seen under the Republicans.
Never lose sight of the fact that ‘your’ ultimate audience is American opinion. It is also Obama’s ultimate point of reference.
Michael BRENNER
December 20, 2008
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. Michael Brenner is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations. He publishes and teaches in the fields of American foreign policy, Euro-American relations, and the European Union. He is also Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Brenner is the author of numerous books, and over 60 articles and published papers on a broad range of topics.
Dr. Michael Brenner is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations. He publishes and teaches in the fields of American foreign policy, Euro-American relations, and the European Union. He is also Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Brenner is the author of numerous books, and over 60 articles and published papers on a broad range of topics.
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