China's Iran Dilemma

Nuclear reaction
Ahmadinejad has upped the ante

Vahid Salemi / AP

Time.com
by Bill Powell

You have to hand it the folks at China's Foreign Ministry. As well as anyone on the planet, they have learned over the years how to craft sentences that reach the summit of diplomatic obfuscation. So it was on Feb. 6, when the Foreign Minister representing this century's ascendant power addressed a gathering that's a blast from the past: the Munich Security Conference, a 46-year-old annual gabfest that used to be populated by Western Europeans and Americans obsessed with plugging the Fulda Gap. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was there this year, and he knew there was no chance he could avoid the single most important issue that leaders in the here and now confront: not Internet censorship in China, not U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan. No, the question of the day is whether the Islamic Republic of Iran will be permitted to develop nuclear weapons while the rest of the world stands around and chats about it. Here's what Yang told the group in Munich: "The parties concerned should, with the overall and long-term interests in mind, step up diplomatic efforts, stay patient and adopt a more flexible, pragmatic and proactive policy. The purpose is to seek a comprehensive, long-term and proper solution through dialogue and negotiations.''

The world's nuclear standoff with Iran is ratcheting ever upward. On Feb. 8, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (no diplomat he) matter-of-factly announced that Iran would soon begin enriching uranium for use in a "medical reactor." That means China will have to answer the central question that confronts it, which was embedded within Yang's diplo-speak: What actually is China's long-term interest in Iran? (See the top 10 Ahmadinejad-isms.)

Beijing has what it used to call "core interests" — issues that stand above and beyond the rest. Taiwan is one. Another — a recent product of its economic surge — is long-term access to the oil, gas and minerals needed to fuel the country's growth for decades to come. Iran, from whom Beijing now buys a tick over 400,000 barrels a day (about 14% of China's total oil imports), is clearly part of that future. But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently called out Beijing in public to get off the fence and sign on to new, tougher sanctions against Tehran at the U.N. In so doing, she used China's dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf as a reason not to appease the mullahs, but to press them: "China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the Gulf, from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supply."

Beijing has already decided, apparently, that a North Korea with nukes is less destabilizing than a North Korea in chaos, with tens of thousands of impoverished souls pouring across its border into China. But Beijing knows no one is going to attack North Korea — knows that in its heart and soul. It knows no such thing about Iran. Prior to Barack Obama's summit meeting with Hu Jintao last year, two U.S. diplomats quietly slipped into Beijing and, in secret, reinforced the obvious: There's this other country in the region called Israel and, well, we're just not sure what they might do. (See what Ahmadinejad's win means for other world leaders.)

Whether the U.S. shared information about what it knows about possible Israeli planning for a strike against Tehran's nuclear facilities is not known. What's known is that Beijing appeared to be unmoved by what it was told. Yang's speech earlier this month and several public statements by other Chinese officials similar to it still show little appetite in Beijing for U.N.-induced sanctions that might affect Iran's oil and gas industry.

But when Clinton went public in isolating Beijing earlier this month, it was clear the diplomatic game had changed, and not in China's favor. Beijing had always had a partner in pushing back against the West's desire for tough sanctions against Iran: Moscow. The Russians don't need Tehran's oil and gas, but they have significant economic interests in Iran, and Vladimir Putin, much more than Hu Jintao & Co., had very much been in the business of sticking a thumb in the eye of the U.S. whenever he could (the default position of pretty much any ex-KGB officer worth his salt). (Read "How Iran Might Beat Future Sanctions: The China Card.")

But the clear indication now is that the Russians will sign on for a U.S. push toward tougher sanctions — if true, a major dividend for Obama's decision to shelve a missile-defense program in Eastern Europe. On Feb. 9, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's Presidential Security Council, said Iran's "actions ... raise doubts in other countries and those doubts are quite valid." This might leave Beijing in a place it can hardly want to be: isolated on the Security Council.

At the U.N., the language will be ever so polite, but the message now to Beijing could well be: The only thing that may stand between an eventual Israeli air strike and the resulting chaos in the Persian Gulf is you. If you alone veto sanctions against Iran, God help us all.

So just how does China define its "overall and long-term interests'' in Iran? We're about to find out.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1963587,00.html#ixzz0fL6nEggQ

China won't veto fresh Iran sanctions

			China won't veto fresh Iran sanctions By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz CorrespondentI NEW YORK - Senior United Nations officials told Haaretz that a Security Council resolution tightening the sanctions on Iran has become more likely, and that the resolution is probably going to be approved. Observers in both New York and Washington estimate that China will think twice about using its veto on a resolution after Russia recently threw its support behind a move against Iran. A veto could expose Beijing as isolated and out of touch with its fellow Security Council members. China could also abstain from voting and allow the decision to be made by a simple majority. However, the sources told Haaretz, the United States is still trying to obtain Chinese support for the sanctions. Ahead of its push for international sanctions at the UN, the U.S. sought on Wednesday to ratchet up pressure on Iran by imposing its own sanctions on elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Western intelligence officials believe is spearheading Iran's nuclear program. The Treasury Department said it was freezing the assets in U.S. jurisdictions of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Rostam Qasemi and four subsidiaries of a previously penalized construction firm he runs because of their alleged involvement in producing and spreading weapons of mass destruction. U.S. officials said the measures were intended as a model for wider action at the UN. "The United States is seeking to reach a consensus between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council on the sanctions issue," one of the sources said. "This would allow it to present the five superpowers as a united coalition, which would increase the impact of the sanctions." According to estimates in Washington and New York, a first American draft for the new resolution will be circulated among Security Council members in early March at the latest, and the vote will take place at the end of the month. "To be honest, nobody knows for certain at the moment what China is going to do," a senior official in New York told Haaretz. "But at the end of the day, China is sensitive about its position as a superpower, and will not be able to ignore the position of other superpowers, including Russia, who support tightening the sanctions. It's not going to go against them by undermining the resolution." The New York Times on Wednesday quoted officials in the Obama administration who said the U.S. president has been applying the same persuasion tack with China he earlier successfully used with Russian president Medvedev. According to the daily, Obama has placed sanctions on Iran at the top of his priorities in recent contacts with Beijing. Experts, however, warned that the same tactics that brought success with Russia may not work with China. A scheduled White House visit by the Dalai Lama has infuriated the Chinese, as did a recent arms deal between the United States and Taiwan. The Americans had earlier planned to begin promoting the resolution in February. France, which supports a tough line on Iran, is this month's president of the Security Council.

China and the U.S.: Too Big to Fail

By Jeffrey Wasserstrom

ENLARGE PHOTO+

Flagging old issues
The U.S.-China dispute is familiar

Beijing has fervently denounced U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to sell more arms to Taiwan, and loudly demanded that he break his coming date with the Dalai Lama. Is this proof that China-U.S. relations have entered a radically new and deeply worrisome phase?

It's tempting to see it that way. There has been much talk of China ruling the world and the clash of civilizations this would prompt. Much has been made of the notion that Chinese leaders have been showing an unexpected cockiness vis-à-vis the U.S. of late, tightly controlling what Obama did when in China, refusing to follow American leads in Copenhagen and then lambasting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for criticizing Beijing in a Jan. 21 speech on Internet freedom. But it's a temptation worth resisting. (See pictures of U.S. Presidents in China.)

China's long, slow return to great-power status is of historic importance and something that will lead to recalibrations of many diplomatic relationships, including that between Washington and Beijing. But as foolish as it would be to ignore this, it's equally foolish to see too much novelty in headline-grabbing stories that fit neatly within established patterns. Chinese officials have expressed outrage before about meetings between foreign leaders and the Dalai Lama. And the Taiwan arms tale follows an even more familiar script. There's nothing new about a U.S. Administration announcing, as Obama's just did, that it's going to sell military hardware to Taiwan. Nor is there anything new about Beijing treating this announcement as proof that the U.S. lacks respect for Chinese sovereignty and for the principles of the "one China" policy that, since the 1970s, has provided the groundwork for relations between the two.

Both sides need to guard against overstating the extent to which the landscape of the international order has changed and against treating China's rise as a more exotic development than it actually is. Keeping these four things in mind should help:

• Just as all politics is local (to a degree), all diplomacy is domestic (to a large extent). China's dramatic growth may have increased its ability to be less deferential toward the U.S. But when officials loudly proclaim that foreign leaders should steer clear of the Dalai Lama, lash out against Clinton's "information imperialism" or stoke popular indignation about Taiwan, their motivation is largely a desire to play the nationalism card as effectively as possible at home, and it is as much a sign of insecurity as it is one of bravado. They see a value in deflecting criticism of the government over issues like corruption, as well as distracting the population from worrying about whether the economic good times will last long enough for those who have so far been left behind to get a chance to enjoy them. Similarly, when American politicians change their rhetoric about or policies toward China, we should remember that this is often done with an eye on how this will play in Peoria. (See pictures of President Obama visiting Asia.)

• A series of similar actions doesn't necessarily represent a coherent policy. Several instances of the Chinese government acting "tougher" could just be discrete events. Rather than read too much into the intensity of recent rhetoric about Clinton's speech and the arms deal, we should watch to see whether, in the coming weeks, China goes along with or tries to block American efforts to put pressure on Iran.

• Whenever we think about how China's rise is sending shock waves through the international order, we should remember that this has happened before. From the 1890s to the 1910s, a continent-sized country was ascending. It claimed to hate imperialism yet wasn't above extending its control over territory. It had a tendency to go it alone, and made other powers nervous. That country was the U.S. (See pictures of China at 60.)

• Beijing's determination to keep its growth rate high and its military up to date limits its ability to alienate other world powers. A boycott, say, of U.S. weapons suppliers over Taiwan (as Beijing has threatened) would simply mean China buying more from European competitors. As satisfying to Chinese jingoists as talk of future military action against Taiwan may be, the flow of Taiwan investment into China is crucial to the mainland's economic health. As, of course, is trade between China and the U.S., which also have a body of water between them and economies growing ever closer.

While Washington and Beijing seem very much at odds just now, we shouldn't let their current state blind us to how intertwined they have become, nor to parallels between America's rise at the start of the last century and China's at the start of this one. Whether they like it or realize it, their relationship is truly one thing too big to fail.

Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, to be published in April by Oxford University Press

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1959001,00.html?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0eYQqqsdH

Google hints at quitting China over cyber attack on e-mail accounts

Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, Temple of Heaven, Beijing, China. The Hall of Prayer
for Good Harvest is located within the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, China.
The Temple of Heaven was originally built in the 15th century. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest
is where the Chinese emperors would pray for good harvests in the country. 2000.

By Ellen Nakashima

Tuesday, January 12, 2010; 6:17 PM

Google, the world's largest Internet search engine, said Tuesday that it may pull out of China because of a sophisticated computer network attack originating in China and targeting its e-mail service.

"We're reviewing our operations there," a company spokesperson said. "If it comes down to it, we may" leave.

Google said it had evidence to suggest that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts" of Chinese human rights activists. The attack was discovered in December.

Based on its investigation to date, Google said it does not believe the attack succeeded. "Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves," the post said.

At least 20 other large companies have been similarly targeted with such attacks, Google said. The firms' industries range from finance and technology to media and chemicals.

China is among a handful of countries considered to have impressive cyber offensive capabilities, but U.S. officials have refrained from publicly accusing the country because determining with certainty who is behind an attack is quite difficult.

Attacks against China rights activists have been growing, however, and suspicion has fallen on the Beijing government or its broad army of proxies.

Column One: Israel’s opening to China

By CAROLINE GLICK, JPOST

This threat stems from two sources. First, the UN-led system of global governance is working to redefine international law by on the one hand whitewashing war crimes by states associated with the majority, and on the other hand rendering it illegal for unpopular countries to take action to protect themselves against aggression. Second, and most important, Israel has become the scapegoat of the UN-led international community. The 57-member Islamic bloc has built an automatic majority for its unrelenting and ever-escalating assaults on Israel’s right to exist.

The new - and false - interpretation of international law gives every General Assembly resolution the weight of binding Security Council resolutions and international treaties. Among this new “legal” regime’s most dangerous features is its bid to overturn state sovereignty by subjecting leading citizens of weak states to politically-motivated criminal prosecutions under the rubric of universal jurisdiction.

With Israel’s right to exist - let alone to defend itself - being denied in an avalanche of General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions, the acceptance of universal jurisdiction is a short step away from turning every Jewish citizen of Israel into an international outlaw.

THIS ESCALATING threat is already hurting Israel’s ability to carry out routine relations with foreign countries. Just last week the IDF was compelled to cancel plans to send a delegation of its officers to England for a joint conference on asymmetric warfare after British authorities were unable to promise that their guests from the IDF wouldn’t be arrested over spurious war crimes allegations during their stay.

During her visit to Israel this week, British Attorney-General Patricia Scotland made clear that the British government is unwilling to cancel Britain’s universal jurisdiction law despite the fact that anti-Israel activists exploit the law to abuse Israeli officials visiting her country.

In her view, the most important thing is for Britain to maintain its commitment to universal jurisdiction. Any mitigation of the right of unaccountable, anti-Israel British judges to issue arrest warrants would, in her mind, water down this most precious of legalisms.

While Britain demonstrates that it prefers international legal conceit to both justice and its bilateral relations with Israel, senior Israeli jurists are making clear that they prefer to maintain their good reputations in places like London over defending the actual legal rights of their country.

On Monday, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak announced that in his view, Israel should accept the jurisdiction of the inherently anti-Israel International Criminal Court. In his words, “Israel is part of the international community, and it must conduct itself in accordance with the interpretation that is common in international law.”

The fact that this “common interpretation” is common only when convenient and is actually antithetical to international law and to the rights of nations is of no interest to Barak. Also of no interest to Israel’s international legal superstar is the fact that the institution set to do the judging is politically stacked against Israel, and that the Islamic bloc-dominated “international community” redefined international law for the purposes of the ICC to make all Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines criminal.

Concerned not only about the anti-Israel likes of Richard Goldstone but also about the likes of “international community” obsessed Barak, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi this week ordered army commanders to integrate legal advisers in decision-making not only during the planning of battles, but also during battles themselves.

In an effort to offset some of the crushing pressure the UN-led international community is placing on Israel to stop defending itself, senior IDF officers have been dispatched to lobby US and UN officials. Unfortunately, it is hard to see how the IDF’s efforts to convince the UN or the US that it upholds international law will make any difference. The UN is a lost cause and under US President Barack Obama, America has been moving swiftly in the direction of Europe in accepting the authority of the UN as the linchpin of a morally-relativist, post-nationalist, philo-Islamic international system.

In his speech at the UN General Assembly in September, Obama renounced the US’s right to lead the international community when he proclaimed, “No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.”

Obama’s decisions to try terrorists as criminal defendants; to close the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay; to join the UN Human Rights Council; and to open criminal investigations against US intelligence operatives all demonstrate that the US supports the expansion of the power of the UN-led international system against actual international law that views independent nation-states rather than the UN as the foundation of the international legal system.

America’s behavior towards the UN today should serve as a reminder to Israel that we mustn’t put all our diplomatic eggs in America’s basket. If we wish to neutralize the threat the UN-based international community poses to our national interests, we must expand our international alliances.

IN OUR efforts we have a potential ally in China. One of Beijing’s abiding positions is that it opposes UN sanctions on individual states. In the Chinese view, such sanctions diminish national rights to sovereignty. It is on the basis of this claim that China has justified opposing sanctions against rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

Israel should make the case to the Chinese that China should back Israel in international institutions, by among other things vetoing UN Security Council resolutions against Israel. If in defense of the principle of sovereignty China is willing to block sanctions against Iran and North Korea, then surely Beijing should be willing to take the far more benign step of supporting Israel.

China’s willingness to buck the US and Europe in refusing to support sanctions against international rogue states has expanded China’s international influence by making it a country that cannot be taken for granted. Likewise, were China to block international sanctions against Israel, it would become an influential player in the big power game in the Middle East. And whereas its support for Iran and North Korea potentially endangers China by empowering destabilizing actors, support for Israel would serve China’s interest of enhancing regional stability since a strong Israel deters regional aggressors from stirring up trouble.

Israel should back up its approach to China with a prolonged public diplomacy campaign to educate the Chinese about the Jewish state. A groundbreaking effort in this field is being initiated this week by StandWithUs, the US-based Israel-advocacy organization. This week, StandWithUs members from Israel will travel to Harbin, China, to present a photography exhibit called “Inside Israel.” Their goal is to educate the Chinese about Judaism, Israel’s history and life in Israel.

It is true that China does not share Israel’s democratic values. Owing to this, it may be difficult for Israel to sustain a bilateral alliance with China over time. However, China and Israel share the distinction of being the two oldest, continuous civilizations. This shared direct line to antiquity can form the basis of a strong bilateral relationship. It is already a source of Chinese attraction to the Jewish state.

Over the past 15 years or so, Israel’s expanding trade ties with China have been a source of friction with the US. As the US turned a blind eye to Chinese theft of US military technologies at places like Los Alamos, New Mexico, American officials were quick to attack Israel for selling military technologies to Beijing. To placate Washington, Israel effectively ended its military sales to China in recent years. It is probably reasonable to continue this practice if only because there is a strong likelihood that China will sell Israel’s military technologies to the likes of Iran and Syria.

At any rate, it is not anti-American for Israel to cultivate closer ties to China. As America’s alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia and its courtship of Iran and Syria show, international affairs are not and should not be monogamous. This has never been more apparent than now. The Obama administration’s moves to subordinate US foreign policy to the UN-based international community make it less clear that Israel can rely on the White House to veto anti-Israel resolutions in the Security Council.

It is fortuitous that this time, when Israel’s need to diversify its international affairs has become acute, that the foreign minister is not a Shimon Peres-type who believes that Israel’s ability to achieve its national interest is a function of the number of European cocktail parties he attends. Whatever Avigdor Lieberman’s drawbacks may be, they clearly don’t include excessive worship of the international community’s taste for opulent statecraft or a desperate desire to be loved by Europe.

From his first moments on the job, as the Obama administration subordinated the US’s joint interests with Israel to the president’s dream of establishing a Palestinian state by 2011, Lieberman moved quickly to diversify Israel’s international ties. Noting that his predecessors harmed Israel by behaving as though our international relations began and ended with negotiations with the Palestinians, Lieberman turned his attention to the great world they ignored.

In September, Lieberman travelled to Africa. There he bolstered Israel’s strategic ties with potential allies in Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria. In July, he went to South America with the declared goal of blunting Iran’s influence in the continent. In at least one of the countries he visited - Colombia - great potential exists for a strategic alliance.

On Tuesday, Lieberman reached out to the Balkans. During a meeting with visiting Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, he noted that the forces of global jihad are making a concerted effort to penetrate the Balkans through the Albanian and Bosnian Muslim communities. This encroaching threat should induce states like Macedonia to enhance their relations with Israel.

Lieberman should seek a diplomatic opening to China just as he has reached out to states in Africa, South America and the Balkans, as well as to Russia. With its Security Council veto, China would be a major asset to Israel in its bid to neutralize the UN-centered international community’s campaign to delegitimize its right to exist.

By supporting Israel, Beijing stands to lose nothing and gain a great deal. Just as China’s support for Iran has not harmed its trade ties - and its burgeoning military ties - with the likes of Saudi Arabia, so its support for Israel will likely have no impact on its ties in the Arab world. More important for China, its support for Israel would enhance its ability to challenge the UN-besotted Obama White House in the great power game.

Ironically, to the extent that by supporting Israel, China secures the rights of nation-states threatened by the rapidly expanding UN colossus, China will become a pivotal defender of embattled democracies on the world stage.

Two Big Developments: Hillary Announces Start of Sanctions Push, Arab Poll Says Iran is Bigger Threat than Israel.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

by Barry Rubin

It may well be that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has given the signal for the new phase of U.S. policy toward Iran. On December 14, she said that the engagement policy with Tehran hadn’t worked and now it needs to press for additional sanctions.

Either this is her attempt to lobby for a tougher line against other administration officials or it's the long-awaited start of the sanctions made necessary by the looming of the administration’s own end-of-the-year deadline to get a deal with Iran or impose more sanctions.

Trying to negotiate, she said, has "produced very little" so "additional pressure is going to be called for."

Her phrasing was interesting, almost as if she was taking a poke at rivals in the administration who are reluctant to take action. "I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians," Clinton said, as if daring someone in the White House to disagree?

So what is the administration going to do? Try to get the UN and EU to support more sanctions. Here the administration likes to claim that its popularity and patient (arguably too patient) coalition-building will bring broad support.

Yet there’s another development that shows the opposite may be true. An important meeting to discuss sanctions, set for December 22, has been postponed at China’s request. As an AP account put it:

“Russia in recent days has moved away from suggesting it would support [sanctions]. And recent statements from Chinese officials indicate that Beijing has not changed its traditional opposition to new sanctions. While Russia and China signed on to three previous sets of UN sanctions against Iran, they also forced their Western Security Council partners to water them down substantially.”

Note that the administration keeps claiming that Moscow and Peking are on board. We are going to see something quite different when the negotiations get serious in January and February.

Buried in a paragraph of an obscure article is explosively important news. A survey of people in 18 Arabic-speaking countries commissioned by a Qatari group—and not fully released yet-- found that a majority see Iran as a bigger threat to their security than Israel and one-third believing Iran is as big a threat as Israel.

This is of historic importance and, of course, reflects reality. This doesn’t mean the Arab attitude toward Israel is going to change drastically, but it does indicate that the real main demand of Arabs toward the West is not making instant Israel-Palestinian peace but protecting them from Iran’s extremist Islamist regime. Western policymakers should take note.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Climate deal falls short of expectations

By GLENN THRUSH & LOUISE ROUG | 12/18/09 4:39 PM EST

Updated: 12/18/09 7:05 PM EST

The climate deal reached between U.S, China and other great powers on Friday night is so vague, hastily hatched and non-binding President Obama isn’t even sure he’ll be required to sign it.

“You know, it raises an interesting question as to whether technically there's actually a signature… It's not a legally binding agreement, I don't know what the protocols are,” said a bleary-eyed Obama, before hopping in Air Force One for the trip back to Washington.

Even as he left, it wasn’t clear that the pact Obama described as “meaningful” would even pass muster with the European Union – or attract enough votes with the 193-nation COP 15 conference to become an official declaration.

"It’s a catastrophe," said Dan Joergensen, a member of the European delegation. "We’re so far away from the criteria that was set up in order to call it a success, and those weren’t really that ambitious to start with."

Obama told reporters he was able to extract a first-ever commitment by India and China to subject their internal monitoring of emissions to international scrutiny, a move he had earlier tied to American participation in a $100 billion-per-year fund for poor nations.

“Those commitments will be subject to international consultation and analysis” similar to World Trade Organization rules but “will not be legally binding,” said Obama. “It will allow each country to show to the world what [they] are doing.”

But the agreement – reached in Friday night talks with leaders of China, India, South Africa and Brazil – was more notable for what it doesn’t accomplish than what it does, an inconvenient truth Obama ruefully acknowledged to reporters.

“This is going to be hard,” Obama said. “This is hard within countries; it's going to be even harder between countries. And one of the things that I've felt very strongly about during the course of this year is that hard stuff requires not paralysis, but it requires going ahead and making the best of the situation that you're in.”

He conceded that no more specific deal – much less a legally binding one – was possible until the issue of “trust” between industrialized and developing nations was resolved.

The agreement contained none of the specific emissions targets European and African negotiators had hoped to nail down, simply a broad-brush promise by the countries in the room to cap the overall global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius and provide a written record of their planned reductions.

It's unclear how many nations, particularly poorer countries who felt shut out of the process, were included in the final deal or how they will vote if the deal is put to one.

It’s also unclear how the president’s half-a-loaf approach will sit with a deadlocked Senate or the Africans, Europeans and Asians who view him as the quintessential 21st Century leader.

"Squarely the blame is on President Obama. When you look very carefully and dig into what happened, you find that there is no difference whatsoever between President Obama and President Bush, except one of them tells it as it is," said Lumumba Di-Aping, the chief negotiator of the G77 bloc of developing countries, in an interview with POLITICO,

He added: "This deal confirms what we have said about the lack not only of transparency but the undemocratic bent of developed nations' leaders… “It is a mockery."

But administration officials painted a different picture, claiming Obama playing an extraordinarily direct – even tactile – diplomatic role, with the president demanding to be admitted to a closed meeting of other countries over the objections of a Chinese protocol officer.