Soft power with a hard edge

The Daily Standard has posted a report by Thomas Joscelyn on the Club of Madrid’s Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security. Those in attendance ranged from George Soros to Hamid Karzai. The remarks of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright are prominently featured in Joscelyn’s report. Also in attendance were Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Amre Mousa, secretary-general of the League of Arab States. The summit sounds like a thorough-going anti-American festival.
Kofi Annan used the conference to outline his “more multilateral approach to fighting terrorism.” Joscelyn notes, however, that Albright was second to none in her criticism of the American-led war on terrorism.
Joscelyn observes: “The summit was the brainchild of wealthy Argentinean entrepreneur and philanthropist Martin Varsavsky. (Besides being the founder of several successful telecom and internet content companies, among Varsavsky’s “plethora of non-business activities,” he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation.)” The parenthetical note is a killer.
Joscelyn gives us much to chew on in this striking report: “The soft power summit.”