The World

It is amazing how quickly the news cycle moves on. When I was packing my bags for Washington over the weekend, the big story was Guantanamo. By the time I got here on Memorial Day (Monday), it was the North Korean nuclear test. And today the headlines have been dominated by Obama’s first Supreme Court pick – a Latino woman, and therefore a “twofer”.

But neither the North Korean or Guantanamo messes are going to go away. They are both an illustration that this foreign-policy business is full of unpleasant surprises that are strangely impervious to the charms of President Obama.

It is remarkable how few good options there are with North Korea. The talk in Washington is of a new package of sanctions. But North Korea is already one of the most impoverished and isolated countries in the world. If the suffering of the North Korean people and the poverty and isolation of the nation really bothered the regime, the nuclear problem would have been solved long ago. Sanctions don’t seem to work, and neither do talks. And even real hawks like John Bolton (Bush’s former UN ambassador) shy away from advocating military action. It would just be too easy for the North Koreans to respond by shelling Seoul.

Closing Guantanamo is also proving devilishly difficult. Obama says the debate about moving some of the prisoners to the US has become irrational. That’s being polite – its borderline insane. Nobody has ever escaped from one of America’s “supermax” prisons – and yet politicians all over the country are queuing up to say that it’s far too dangerous to move any Guanatanamo prisoners to the American mainland.

The State Department now has the unenviable task of trying to persuade some of America’s allies to take a few of the remaining 240 Guantanamo inmates. The Germans have been offered some Uighurs, because there is a Uighur community in Germany and there isn’t one in the US. But the German government seems strangely unenamoured of the idea.

There is an added problem with trying to settle a few Guantanamites in Europe – the Schengen agreement, which has abolished border controls across most of western Europe. Even if one EU country could be prevailed upon to accept a former inmate with ties to their country, all the other Schengen countries would have to be happy – because the ex-prisoner would be just a train or car-ride away.

Some of the Guantanamites will have to go on trial. And that might provoke another about-turn from Obama. The evidence the Americans have against many of them is enough to convince the US that it would be too dangerous just to release them – but is not hard enough to stand up in a civilian court. So the much-denounced “military commissions” may have to be prettied up and revived.

All in all, Obama’s goal of closing Guantanamo by the beginning of next year is beginning to look, well, a bit ambitious.