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Comment by bowlofpetunias | Hacker News Reader

No, flexie doesn't realize that, and neither does 99.9% of the rest of the worlds population. Which is exactly why it's such a stupid action.

Politics and diplomacy are all about perception. And the perception of the US throwing a major tantrum over one hacker is the impression that will stick.

Obama has just increased the damage to the image of the US, nothing else.

Also, I don't quite buy the "laundry list". He could have cancelled sooner.

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That's an argument that could fit any set of facts. Just say "most people don't know that, and it's the optics that matter" and you can shoot down any policy.

I see your point, but I would say that if the general population sees it that way, then your "optics" truly do matter. Speculation can be extremely damaging, and that's why the president has an entire press corps to manage that image.

"Optics" do matter. I think this move was made to a greater number of political points at home than fewer ones abroad. In any case, it shouldn't be too big of a surprise since the US administration has been very clear about Snowden and their intentions from the very beginning.

For whatever set of reasons, going to summit would have made Obama and the administration look weak at home.

> For whatever set of reasons, going to summit would have made Obama and the administration look weak at home.

That is the reasoning precisely. Some of the news stories noting the cancellation are merciless in their insults to Obama: e.g. "Finally, a red line that is actually red".

it shouldn't be too big of a surprise since the US administration has been very clear about Snowden and their intentions from the very beginning.

Obama said that he was, “not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker” during a press conference in Senegal. That was a pretty straight-forward signal that he was not going to make a big deal about Snowden. Other people in the USG have been losing their proverbial shit over the situation, but Obama himself deliberately downplayed it.

Bizarrely, the US decided to flex its muscle to ground Evo Morales' plane, on the suspicion that Snowden may be on it.

Actions speak louder than words. This is obviously a much bigger issue to the Obama administration than they are saying.

Can you support that argument with evidence, or do you simply think it's self-evident that no country would disrupt Morales' flight unless the USG had pulled strings?

"While Spain said it gave Morales’ plane the go-ahead to fly over the Iberian peninsula after receiving assurance that the NSA leaker was not on board, the European nation’s foreign minister did admit that a U.S. request had led it to delay approving the over flight."

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2013/07/10/bolivia...

Huh! Interesting. Thank you! I hadn't seen this.

It doesn't look downplayed to me; it's a complete sentence in the White House's press release on the summit. A pretty big deal diplomatically (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/07/statem...):

Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship.

Matter to whom? The optics for Obama in the U.S. matter because U.S. citizens can vote him or his party out of office. And, generally, this is non-issue in the U.S.

The optics internationally are very different; influence depends on military and economic levers. Summits exist to show those levers getting pulled; if neither side is willing pull anything, there's no point in having a summit.

> For whatever set of reasons, going to summit would have made Obama and the administration look weak at home.

I dunno. Cancelling a meeting doesn't exactly look strong either.

I don't see your point. It's not an argument, it's an observation: "outside of your bubble, the rest of us see this clearly". Pretty much the opposite of what you are objecting to.

99% of the world's population is in a bubble, and you see yourself as part of a fortunate 1% that can see clearly. Seems legit.

bowlofpetunias' observation: "You are in a very small bubble. The rest of us 99.9% see it clearly." Look at some of the other comments in this thread. The entire rest of the world is talking about Snowden and the bad US behavior that he revealed.

99.9% of the rest of the world doesn't even know who Snowden is, what he did, or that Russia granted him temporary assylum. On top of that they probably don't even care that this meeting was canceled.

That isn't true. Part of what makes the Snowden story so significant is that a huge, huge number of people do know who he is and (at least very generally) what he did and why he is being hunted by the USA.

I don't think anybody has the numbers, but I'd bet close to one in ten adult humans alive today know who he is. Certainly hundreds of millions have heard of him, at least; the story's been on prime time TV and prominently positioned in textual news sources across Japan, Europe, Canada, and most of the democratic world, and also in totalitarian states like China and Russia.

Correction: Russia is not a totalitarian state. At least not yet. The regime is softer and closer to authoritarian. Very far from totalitarian Soviet Union.

Update. Authoritarian state does whatever it wants, but doesn't touch most people (those who don't interfere with the state). Totalitarian state does whatever it wants too, but also "cares" about all people, intervening with their movement, ideology, religion, education, job, property, family, freedom etc. Think Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.

Very far from totalitarian Soviet Union, but not far from non-totalitarian Soviet Union. Which was which?

Remember that a lot of people in the former Soviet Union remember it fondly (at least over certain periods, or places) and would not agree that it was "totalitarian," where this is understood as derogatory.

Otherwise, Putin would not be able to maintain such a persistent hold on the country.

I was using "totalitarian" as an actual property of the state, not as a derogatory term. The fact that a lot of people were okay with the regime is irrelevant here.

As for non-totalitarian Soviet Union. I think only the last few years of Gorbachev rule can be described as non-totalitarian. The control was being relaxed on many fronts: freedom of speech and press (glasnost), freedom to be elected, steps to legalize business activities (cooperatives), freedom to leave the country (May 1991), cultural freedom. Many even say that speech during glasnost was more free than today.

I'm sorry to tell you, Snowden has been big news on the rest of the world.

I'm from Uruguay, and I can personally attest that people in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil are fully aware of Snowden (and rooting for him and against the U.S. government in this case).

It has been front page news on almost every country I know of, including all the big ones (friends and family in most countries of Europe, India and China and the UAE have confirmed this).

The person on the street here knows who Snowden is, how the U.S. spies on everybody (well, most suspected already, but it's now confirmed), etc...

European here.

My extended family is far from tech-savvy, and it's the first time I had some of them contact me to get a better understanding of what was going on, and what did that mean for them. Also, his case was debated on parliament, be it at a national or European level.

>I'm from Uruguay, and I can personally attest that people in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil are fully aware of Snowden (and rooting for him and against the U.S. government in this case).

That's because your government pretends that it can taunt the bull that is America in order to manipulate its people into thinking its government is somehow decent. The only government that does not spy on its populace is that which is too meek to pull it off.

Don't assume all governments are tyrannical as the US.

Brazil once fired a bunch of people from intelligence AND police after they found out they cooperated, with warrants, to wiretap a known big criminal. The population was outraged, but it was clear, intelligence was not authorized to wiretap Brazilians, in fact the punishment for that was the actual removal of all.wiretapping equipment from the agency ( I think it is stupid that punishment... )

I am very sure our intelligence have no crazy ass large scale espionage like US is doing to its own citizens.

So was the 'crime' of the intelligence agents wiretapping Brazilians, or wiretapping anybody? Because to hear it on HN you'd think the U.S. would never be allowed to engage in foreign surveillance at all.

Well, our government is far from perfect, but I vastly prefer it over the one in the U.S.

You might want to read on President Mujica :) , I often disagree with him, but I do believe he's honest and he strongly defends his principles.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243493

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mujica

Also, being a smaller country gets us more accountability and participation. I even ran for parliament :) (and for an opposing party to Mujica's, but I still respect him a lot).

Uruguayan here. We have had multiple dictatorships in our short history. We know what the government is capable of, not in theory, but in our bones.

We root for Snowden, because we share his pain.

Indeed, that is very true - though it holds much more so for the generations before mine.

I didn't live the dictatorship, but it's a big part of our lives - we have as prominent figures for political parties both President Mujica who was a guerrilla fighter, and the son of Bordaberry, the president that led to the dictatorship.

I am from Brazil, and I see even cleaning ladies talking about snowden and curious.

Also lots of people I talked think Obama is a idiot asshole ( different from Bush, viewed as a evil asshole ).

Also our government even invited Greenwald to give explanations on our Senate, our senators are very concerned.

Really? I assumed the proxy war in Syria was a much bigger concern.

> the perception of the US throwing a major tantrum over one hacker is the impression that will stick.

Whose perception is this, and why is that perception important to US interests?

Whenever the US complains about something like the treatment of some political dissident in Russia, Russia has some little response like shutting down adoptions of Russian orphans. Each side has the sovereign right to do these things. Diplomacy has worked like this for ages. It's not at all particular to the US, or to the modern era.

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