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The Honorable Daniel Nobelstein | |
|---|---|
 Mr. Nobelstein leaving a CDI conference in 2015. | |
| Imperial Foreign Minister of Belhavia | |
| Assumed office February 12th, 2014 | |
| Preceded by | Lord Joseph Hansdann |
| Imperial Deputy Foreign Minister for World Affairs | |
| In office May 6th, 2010 – February 12th, 2014 | |
| Preceded by | Noam Krasky |
| Succeeded by | Azriel Frum |
| Inspector-General of the Foreign Ministry | |
| In office January 3rd, 2001 – March 17th, 2008 | |
| Preceded by | Zevulun Gold |
| Succeeded by | Phillip Weiss |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 14th, 1960 Raffenburg, Raffen |
| Nationality | Belhavian |
| Political party | Conservative Party |
| Spouse | Nancy E. Nobelstein |
| Residence | Provisa |
| Alma mater | B.A., History, Callas Liberal Arts College M.A.F.A., Imperial Provisa University Abramowicz School of Foreign Affairs |
| Profession | Civil servant, Academic, Functionary, Political Appointee, Pundit |
Daniel R. Nobelstein (born December 14th, 1960) is the current Imperial Foreign Minister of Belhavia and formerly Deputy Foreign Minister of World Affairs. He is a member of the Conservative Party. He is a career functionary who has been appointed to several mid- and senior-level posts in the Imperial Foreign Ministry under the last five Conservative administrations.
Nobelstein has served in several posts throughout his time as a professional functionary in the Foreign Ministry, being appointed by the Settas Administration to serve as the Assistant Chief Policy Adviser to the Foreign Minister at the tender age of 23, in 1983. He would move around to a couple of mid-level offices until the Liberal Democrats returned to the Presidential Palace under the Holleran Administration in 1993. During President Holleran's tenure, he joined a private neoconservative think tank, the Committee for National Security, which was dedicated to right-leaning foreign policy advocacy.
When Conservatives retook the presidency in 1997 under the Fiedler Administration, Nobelstein became a senior aide to new Foreign Minister Joseph Hansdann before being appointed Inspector-General of the Foreign Ministry in 2001. After taking a two-year break to serve as executive director of the neoconservative foreign-policy think tank Project for an Imperial Century, he returned to the Ministry as a political appointee once again, being named Deputy Foreign Minister for World Affairs, a prestigious and high-profile post, in 2010.
Before his promotion to Foreign Minister, Nobelstein was well-known to the public as the Goldman Administration's chief attack dog against the activities of Freeleaks.org, a whistle-blower organization some have defined as 'left-anarchistic' and 'anti-statist' in nature.
Early Life and Education
Nobelstein was born to Gershon and Miriam Nobelstein in Raffen in December 1960. Coming of age in a largely secular and middle-income family, Nobelstein was attracted to white-collar professions as he grew older. He attended a private community Jewish day school from kindergarten until 12th grade, though he graduated with middling scores at the 50% rank.
He played several sports, primarily Emmerian gridiron football in loosely-organized local leagues in rural Raffen. He was considered a bright student if not academically-oriented, though he had several minor run-ins with the law around ages 17 and 18. In the 1970s, while he and his family were vacationing in Romula, Rodarion, Nobelstein would have a run-in with Pietro Ciano, then a student at University of San Michele. Though the future Rodarian statesman-to-be was ten years his senior, the two briefly discussed current events after Nobelstein observed him debating another student in a foreign affairs class that Nobelstein was listening to. When both men became their nations' foreign ministers respectively in 2014, they nostalgically recalled the event over the phone.
He later attended Callas Liberal Arts College, graduating in the top third of his class with honors. He married his college sweetheart, Nancy, in an October 1982 ceremony after their graduation from college. He attended the Abramowicz School of Foreign Affairs at Imperial Provisa University from 1982 - 1983, earning a Masters in Foreign Affairs.
Policy Wonk
Using a contact from an old friend from college as well as an impressive Master's thesis on the ongoing revolutionary changes in global political economy and how it affected current foreign policy, Nobelstein secured a position as the Assistant Chief Policy Adviser to the Foreign Minister, a prestigious position for someone right out of school.
He advocated a strong pivot to the West in the Cold War, building close relationships with nations such as Rodarion as allies against KosCo nations such as the Bogorian Socialist Republic and the left-wing Islamist Ankaran Union. His advice was relayed to President Julian Settas, who implemented several of his ideas. His superiors pleased by his ingenuity, his clout rose in the administration's highest foreign policy circles.
His landmark essay, A Fascade of Strength: The Innate Fragility of the Communist World, put him on the map to the broader foreign policy and diplomatic intellectual community in Belhavia as his predictions - the spread of the Blue Wave would weaken and undermine the Communist World - was to come true. After the fall of the Hornatyian communist regime and the restoration of its monarchy in 1987, he was promoted to Chief Policy Adviser to the Foreign Minister.
He remained in this position under Naftali Katz until 1993.
Political Appointee in the Foreign Ministry
Hiatus From Functionary Career (1993 - 1997)
After Katz's defeat in the 1992 presidential election, Nobelstein joined the exodus of high-level political appointees for the "wonk world" of Provisa think tanks, teaching positions, and lobbying outfits to await until the Conservatives returned to power.
He joined a neoconservative think tank, the Committee for National Security, where he wrote policy papers attacking the 1995 SNIA naval cuts as "detrimental to Belhavian global and foreign security interests, as well as our national security for our overseas colonial empire."
He was a strong proponent of the Southern Partnership Commerce Initiative, calling it "a great way forward for us and our friends and neighbors."
In 1996 and 1997, after traveling to Rodarion, Ulthrannia, and Westonaria, he wrote bromides warning of an impeding "break in the Anticommunist World between Free and Authoritarian Pardes", which emerged by 2002, earning Nobelstein the reputation as a foreign policy "prophet".
Inspector-General of the Foreign Ministry
Between 2001 and 2008, he served as the Inspector-General of the Foreign Ministry. He was blamed by some as a bad-faith Tory plant by the outgoing Fiedler presidency appointed to the post in the twilight days of that administration, and produced embarrassing audits and critical reports of the financial and professional conduct of the Foreign Ministry under Fiedler's successor, Liberal Democrat Garret Holleran. He retorted to the national press corps that his negative reports of the Holleran-era Foreign Ministry "simply reflected facts on the ground." He resisted calls by the liberal intelligentsia to resign, calling such charges "blatant bias."
He repeatedly took political hits for lacking auditor or accounting credentials for the position. He and his defenders replied that he was a longtime insider and diplomat familiar with the Ministry's internal workings and this gave him critical insight in properly overseeing the internal affairs of the Ministry.
He left that post in 2008 to serve as executive director of a neoconservative think tank until 2010.
Deputy Foreign Minister for World Affairs
In 2010, President Eli Goldman appointed him to the high-profile Ministry post of Deputy Foreign Minister for World Affairs. He used his position to backchannel to the Rodarians through old friends in the West as well as closely coordinate with allies such as Emmeria, Arthurista, and Belfras.
He was a fierce advocate of closer ties with Anikatia, especially under the Bykov presidency, as well as creating closer coordination with Skanderan allies and trade partners as a way to counter Estovnian power in that region. He was instrumental in lobbying Anikatia, Karinzgrad, and the Basilene Empire to join SOPCOMM in 2010, 2012, and 2015, respectively.
Freeleaks Criticism
He was perhaps most well-known as Deputy Foreign Minister for his very public role against Freeleaks.org. When the left-anarchist hacker group leaked embarrassing diplomatic cables between CDI nations in December 2013, he denounced the group harshly. The next week, President Goldman signed a presidential decree adding the group to Belhavia's National Security Bulletin as an "enemy of the state."
Freeleaks would often publish its leaks to sympathetic reporters in the largely left-wing Arthuristan press, and by February 2014, Nobelstein engaged in a verbal war of words with certain Loweport press outlets that had complicity in Freeleaks' activities. This culminated in an embarrassing leak by Freeleaks of a diplomatic cable Nobelstein sent to his Emmerian counterpart, Ali Kouri, where he bitterly complained about certain Arthuristan media platforms' unwillingness to confront Freeleaks. After the leak, he and Kouri both refused to comment on the veracity of the leaked cable.
Foreign Minister (2014 - Present)
He was appointed Foreign Minister in early February 2014 by President Goldman as part of a broader reshuffling of some Cabinet posts as well as for his distinguished and successful diplomatic career. He and President Goldman shared important similar beliefs on the direction of Belhavia's foreign policy in Goldman's second term, as well as compatible temperamental and geopolitical outlooks.
CDI-RCO Tensions
New Pontus Crisis
Breakup of the Western States
Bogorian Crisis
Temuair-Basilene Détente Efforts
As part of his position on countering Estovakiva, Nobelstein has mediated efforts for a détente between Basilene and Temuair, most recently leading to Basilene's joining SOPCOMM in March 2015.
He arranged the sale of surplus Army supplies and vehicles to the Basilenes in July 2015.
Orlessia Sea Crisis
Relationships with other states
Emmeria
Nobelstein is believed to think highly of URE President Alex Vaziri and has urged broad coordination across-the-board between Belhavia and Emmeria on world affairs. He has called the Emmero-Belhavian special relationship "the most powerful in world history." He successfully secured U.R. D.O.D. reauthorization for the Belhavian naval garrison at Joint Base Iron Bottom at the end of the Empire's lease in 2017.
Arthurista
Although he has written against the Arthuristan humanitarian-focused international law and diplomacy efforts in the 1980s and 1990s as a senior-level policy wonk, calling them "ineffectual and usually naïve and inept," by the early 2010s he reversed his earlier criticisms and praised Arthuro-led diplomatic efforts as "practical, smart, and pragmatic" in a CDI conference in early 2015. He called Arthurista affectionately the "premier liberal power in our world" during his key-note speech to the conference, eliciting a round of applause.
Westonaria
As part of War Minister Zalman Yitzchak Katz's "Pivot to the East", Nobelstein has secured greater diplomatic cooperation with the Westonarian government to counter growing Ulthrannic forays into the region.
Rodarion
Echoing a similar view as President Eli Goldman, Nobelstein has said "Rodarion is Belhavia's kindred spirit culturally and socially, if not always on ideology and geopolitics." He has worked hard to maintain strong bilateral ties and close communication between Provisa and Romula, and has visited Rodarion no less than four times in his first two years in office, the most of any Foreign Minister.
Ulthrannia
Nobelstein has remained tight-lipped on Ulthrannia, though he strongly condemned Vicar de Fey in January 2015 after he and another Ulthrannic politician called for the forceful seizure of CDI territories in Southwest Ashizwe. With the outbreak of the Niyerian War in August 2015, Nobelstein suggested at a press conference that "the idea of Ulthrannia as a regional hegemon in its sphere of influence is becoming more and more in doubt by the week."
Nonetheless, he has spoken out in cordial terms on Belhavian-Ulthrannic economic ties, calling them "the stuff of friendship."
Anikatia
He had long viewed Anikatia in a negative light from the 1980s and 1990s as a foreign policy analyst studying the DSRA. He described the Anikatians in 1991 as "a sheepish people...wound tightly around communal and collectivist norms and a rigid social caste-like system despite their allegedly 'progressive' Communist regime."
Unlike many of his other predictions that came true, the fall of communism in Anikatia in 2001 came as a complete shock to Nobelstein, and he wrote columns increasingly respectful of the country as it democratized and marketized in the mid-2000s.
He maintained strong connections with then-President Baek Myung-hee in 2014 as well as former FAM supporters such as David Choe, of whom Nobelstein had wrote on extensively during the Cold War. In a leaked cable from Freeleaks.org in January 2015, Nobelstein is alleged to have been concerned about the new Socialist-led government in power and fretted over its increasing moves towards the RCO orbit. Publicly, he denied the cable ever existed.
Political Views
He is a noted conservative academic, espousing expressly neoconservatism, right-wing foreign policy realism, and hawkish security views.
He told the press in 2002 that then-President Garret Holleran's attempts to not enforce the White Terror laws were a "national tragedy", and implied he was a Neo-White supporter.
Personal life and family
He has been married to Nancy Nobelstein (neé Danziger) since 1982, having been married for 33 years as of 2015. They have two children, Yehudi (age 29), a fashion magazine writer, and Benjamin (age 25), a Conservative Party political operative.
They live part of the time in Provisa and the rest in Raffenburg.