Happy New Year, readers one and all!
My chief hope for 2008 is that we can persuade a decisive proportion of people around the world-- but especially here in the United States-- that looking at security as something that militaries can bring about is to fundamentally misunderstand the age we live in.
If the experiences of the US's technologically bloated military in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 4-6 years, and the experience of Israel's military in Lebanon in 2006 can teach us anything it is that military superiority and prowess is no longer on its own a guarantor that a state can win and significant strategic gains in other countries. There are a number of reasons why this is so; we can discuss them all at some point. But one of the main reasons why military power does not suffice is that it neglects-- and indeed, it also directly undercuts-- the main component of security in the 21st century, that is, the security of actual human persons.
Back in the 1990s many theorists around the world ( though sadly few in the United States) started to sketch out a whole new theory of security that went by the name of "human security". At that point, the US military was still training and planning according to a slightly updated variant of the doctrine it had followed for the 45 years of the Cold War, and indeed for many decades prior to that, too. Rumsfeld tried to "reform" or even "revolutionize" that doctrine-- and according to all the accounts he was eager to use the invasion of Iraq to "prove" the effectiveness of the relatively light and mobile hi-tech forces he favored.
But he was still operating according to the idea that guns and steel were what would be decisive-- either directly or through the completely debilitating "shock and awe" they were able to induce in the targeted populations. That was Dan Halutz's idea in Lebanon in 2006, too.
It didn't work, for any of them. (And nor, in Lebanon, had that approach worked for the Israelis when they tried earlier variants of it in 1982, 1993, or 1996, either.)
So in 2008, let's all of us come back to this powerful idea of human security. It is the idea that my country will be more secure if the citizens of other countries near and far also feel secure-- secure, that is, in what counts to us all, as humans. And conversely, that if citizens of other countries feel insecure, that will make my country more insecure, too.
Here, from the UNDP's Human Development Report of 1994 is a pretty good introduction to the idea of human security:
• Human security is a universal concern. It is relevant to people everywhere, in rich nations and poor…
• The components of human security are interdependent. When the security of people is endangered anywhere in the world, all nations are likely to get involved…
• Human security is easier to ensure through early prevention than later intervention. It is less costly to meet these needs upstream rather than downstream…
• Human security is people-centred. It is concerned with how people live and breathe in a society, how freely they exercise their many choices, how much access they have to market and social opportunities—and whether they live in conflict or in peace…
But for now, since it is almost midnight here in Virginia, I shall simply leave you all with the idea that human security is a concept whose power and relevance are surely evident to more people today than ever before.
So Happy New Year! May 2008 be a year in which all human communities can become more secure-- and also one in which more of us than ever before can come to understand that human interdependence really is at the foundation of everyone's security.
My latest op-ed is in today's Christian Science Monitor. (Here and here.) I think it has a suitably year's-end feel to it. The title is America: Step up on climate change; Global warming is the nuclear issue of our age.
Okay, I realize that climate change is not exactly like nuclear weapons. But here is how I end the piece:
The people of the rest of today's richly interconnected world will be monitoring Washington's performance carefully. How will Americans and our leaders respond?
In better faith, that is, than at the time of the 1999 Kyoto agreement... Back then, the Clinton administration fought tooth-and-nail for terms in the agreement that were extremely favorable to the US-- and then returned back to Washington and made zero effort to get the agreement ratified by the US Senate. And the chief US negotiator at the time was.... Al Gore. And the person who was Chairman Pro-tem of the Senate at the time was.... Al Gore.
And now, Al Gore is the darling of the environmental community and has gotten (half of) a Nobel Peace Prize as a great environmentalist. So the world turns, eh?
Anyway, read the whole piece and tell me what you think.
I want to second the judgment that Pat Lang expressed over at his blog today, to the effect that there is no prospect of any independent international investigation into Benazir's killing.
Hillary Clinton-- you remember her, she's the one who keeps touting her claimed "experience" in governance, including foreign affairs-- has been making a big deal on the campaign path of issuing strident calls for just such an investigation. The potent sub-text there being that no-one can believe the credibility of any investigation organized solely by the Pakistani authorities.
Well, yes and no-- though the speed and vigor with which Hillary launched her call for an international investigation looked, in itself, highly politicized and confrontational.
But Lang is quite right to say that no such investigation will be convened. Who would do it? The only possible authorizing body with any legitimacy would be the Security Council, and there are four governments with veto power there-- perhaps even five-- that would almost certainly block any attempt to embarrass Pres. Musharraf at this time.
Which is of course very different from Lebanon, 2005, where Pres. Lahoud had no staunch, veto-wielding supporters to cover his back on the SC.
Lang was quite correct to write,
There will be no effective international investigation into Bhutto's death.
It is very hard indeed to conclude that these proceedings have had a constructive record, on balance, either in deterring the future commission of atrocities-- sometimes in the very same countries where the indicted/convicted miscreants operated-- or in institutionalizing norms of accountability and good governance in the countries targeted by them.
All the people in the international community who continue to root for "international" or internationally-launched criminal proceedings that turn out not to be responsible to anything resembling a democratic polity, and not to bring about the promised policy outcomes (as listed above), should reflect carefully on-- and seek to learn from-- the disastrous record of the Saddam trial.
Especially every year on December 30.
Juan Cole is reporting that the leaders of the Bhutto-ist "Pakistan People's Party" have anointed Benazir's 19-year-old son Bilawal to be the party's next leader, with a feudal lord of some slightly lesser order to be the party's candidate in the elections that are still scheduled to go ahead January 8. I guess Bilawal's daddy, Asif Zardari either could not run or would not have made a credible candidate in the elections because of his past convictions for serious corruption. Benazir herself had won an agreement from Musharraf that the indictments outstanding against herself on similar charges would not be pressed on her recent return from exile. But I guess the deal did not extend to wiping Zardari's slate clean as well.
The crowning of the youthful Bilawal as the leader of this avowedly populist or even perhaps "socialist" party reminds me of leadership norms within Lebanon's main "socialist" party, the Progressive Socialist party (PSP). It was founded by Druze feudal overlord Kamal Jumblatt and was headed by him until he was killed (by the Syrians) in 1977, at which time the leadership passed immediately to Kamal's youthful son Walid, who has headed it ever since.
In the case of the PSP, almost no-one in Lebanon takes seriously its claim to be a "socialist" party in any meaningful sense. The only people who apparently do are the leaders of the "Socialist International" who still list the PSP as a "Full member party". On the other hand, that web-page there, which is on the SI's official website, also lists Fatah as a "consultative party", which I find equally hilarious.
Nearly all eyes in the western media have been on Pakistan. (And in the US media, most of the concern has been of a cloyingly US-centric nature: Should "we" continue pushing for early Pakistani elections? How will this affect "our" campaign in Afghanistan? What should "we" do about any threats to the Pakistani nukes? etc., etc.)
Meanwhile, China and Japan have been undertaking a very serious-looking entente. Check out what Xinhua has been loading onto its English-language newsfeed on Chinese foreign policy over the past couple of days...
Just one little item about an Assistant Foreign Minister going to deliver his condolences on Benazir Bhutto's death at the Pakistani Embassy. Nothing else yet about Pakistan. (That doesn't mean that deep in the bowels of the CPC headquarters they aren't discussing the assassination in some depth, and most likely with considerable concern.)
But I rather liked the photos on this page of "Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (L) and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pos[ing] for a photo during playing baseball at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China, on Dec. 29, 2007."
It seems they were only playing catch with their mitts there-- no sign of a bat, or a batter. No word on any scores, either.
Xinhua also tells us that Fukuda will "visit the hometown of Confucius in Qufu, Shandong Province, before wrapping up his four-day China tour on Sunday."
For some time now (and certainly, long before last Thursday's killing of Benazir Bhutto), I've been intending to write a post here about the concept of "winnability", as it applies to the US-led COTW's campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan. What does it mean to "win" in either country? How could we define it? How could it be achieved? In general, though, I've been moving much closer to the view that neither of these campaigns are actually "winnable" in the ways and the political frameworks within which they are currently being waged. I'm increasingly of the view that, if these campaigns are to be "won", then they simply cannot be won under US leadership, for a number of different reasons.
We could give a first approximation of "winning" in either country as comprising the restoration of calm throughout all or nearly all of the country and and the emergence and consolidation of the key elements of good governance there. That's a pretty minimalist definition, though it is one in which I have tried to keep the interests of the citizens of the two countries front and center, which is where they need to be.
But who could say, after the experience of six years of a US-led COTW running an occupation in Afghanistan, and 4.5 years of the US-led COTW occupying Iraq, that continued US "leadership" of of these occupation/pacification efforts could in any way be a formula for "winning" in these terms?
I'm not writing this as a "self-hating American". I just think that the US (a) is too militarized and violence-prone as a society for most of its leaders even to know how to start thinking about winning a complex politico-military campaign in today's unprecedentedly interconnected world; (b) lacks the political vision, administrative capabilities, political commitment, and-- last but not least--troop numbers to be able to win either of these campaigns, let alone both of them together; (c) lacks the global political legitimacy that would be required to mobilize other countries to contribute meaningfully to these campaigns under its leadership; and (d) lacks the political legitimacy within, specifically, the world Muslim community to be able to lead a winning pacification campaign either of these two majority-Muslim countries.
Some further questions arise. First of all, if not the US, then who?
Answer: the United Nations, with all its flaws... But at least, regarding the global legitimacy question, the UN is infinitely preferable to the US. Real UN leadership of the pacification/nation-building campaign is the only way forward I see in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Second: might not the US be able to win one or both of these campaigns under some different, post-Bush president? I don't think so. Bill Richardson, Ron Paul, and Dennis Kucinich have all vowed they will pull the US troops out of Iraq. That is an excellent start to reframing the US's engagement with the world. But then, what about Afghanistan?
Even with the best will in the world, and most visionary kinds of policies emanating from both the next administration and the next Congress, I still don't see that in January 2009 any US President can re-tool the whole way the country's foreign policy and particularly its military works within the required time-frame. Despite the recent surface innovations introduced in some parts of Iraq by Gen. Petraeus with his new COIN manual, the vast bulk of the US military-- and many of its NATO allies-- remain focused on very heavy use of lethal weapons-- the "bludgeoning" approach that seeks to bring about either the complete obliteration or the complete submission of "the enemy."
But as the Israelis discovered in Lebanon in 1993, 1996, and 2006, that is a highly anachronistic view of warfare.
The US-led COTW forces are learning that in Iraq and Afghanistan every single day, too. But there's not much, really, that they can do about it. You can't change the whole way the US interacts with the rest of the world and the way the 1.4-million-person US military has been trained and indoctrinated for several generations now, within just a few months.
The chronically war-burdened peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan need a new, non-militarized-- and preferably also intentionally anti-military-- concept. And they need a new decision-making framework within which it will be pursued. Real national independence would be a good starting-point for that framework. But insofar as the societies involved may still be unable to reach internal agreement on the particular political form of that independence, there would be an important role for the UN in helping to mediate the negotiations required to reach that formula; in delivering vital services, including public security, for each country until its national government can take over; and in providing other forms of support to these war-stressed countries. The UN played a generally helpful role in helping midwife the great waves of decolonization that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. And now, a UN that is potentially a lot more capable than it was then could play a similar role in both these countries today.
(It goes without saying that this should be a UN that is truly an equal effort of all the powers on the Security Council-- and not just a face-saving facade for the US-UK condominium, as it was in Iraq in the 1990s.)
But truly, I still can't see a US-led COTW "winning" in either Iraq or Afghanistan...
Benazir Bhutto's killing was horrific. At a personal level I can only hope she didn't suffer too much as she died. But she had already shown herself to be an extremely courageous leader. It is true-- though it is not nearly sufficient-- to say that assassinating her was a cowardly act. And western commentators are quite right to point out that this assassination pushes Pakistan further and faster on the path it already seemed to be on, towards an even more serious political crisis and perhaps state failure of a catastrophic kind... This, in a country that (a) has nuclear weapons, and (b) is an absolutely crucial part of, and location for, the US-led campaign against Al-Qaeda and its supporters.
But where most western commentators have it wrong, I think, is when they assume that this is just about all that is at stake in Pakistan. That is an extremely solipsistic, occidocentric viewpoint.
Hey, people! Pakistan is located in Asia. So is Afghanistan. And developments in those two countries are not simply of concern to the US-led west. In fact, other major world powers including China, India, and Russia, have far greater stakes in the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan than do the US or its western allies, and correspondingly greater concerns about the threat of political meltdown in those two countries.
We could remember, first of all, that Pakistan received some key assists in the development of its nuclear weapons program from China (and also some from the US, I seem to recall.) That happened at a time when China was not unreasonably concerned about India's development of nuclear weapons. At that time, India had a strategic alliance with the Soviet Union (and yes, there still was a Soviet Union.) And Russia and the Soviet Union were in serious strategic competition with each other.
So there is, for starters, a very tight historical nexus among the nuclear-weapons stances of the four large Asian countries...
Well, that was back in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, relations among these and many other Asian countries have shifted significantly. Today's China has much better relations with Russia and India than it did back then. All three of those countries have reason to be extremely concerned indeed about any further eruption and consolidation of violent Islamism in and from central Asia, such as might well ensue from further social/political breakdown in Pakistan and Afghanistan. China, India, and Russia probably all feel themselves to be in the front rank of those threatened by any Taliban/Qaeda resurgence in Central Asia-- much more than distant America, or Europe.
So what is the logic of having the US and NATO play such a prominent role in the anti-Qaeda campaign in Afghanistan, and having the US play such a prominent role in it, in Pakistan? Especially given the political toxicity of the US and its western allies in Muslim societies at the present time... This really does not make any sense to me.
(I found this article, by BBC producer Ben Anderson, who was embedded with the British forces in Afghanistan's Helmand Province last summer, very informative. The bottom line I took from it was that even 5.5 years into the West's anti-Taleban campaign inside Afghanistan, its leaders still didn't have any clue as to how they might succeed, and in the interim were relying only on loosing massive amounts of deadly ordnance into the country and its people.)
But at a broader political level it doesn't make much sense, either. Unless, I suppose, you were a wily Russian or Chinese strategic planner and you saw the military and power-projection capabilities of the US and its NATO allies being rapidly and very expensively attrited there in the mountains of Afghanistan. But it strikes me that if such planners exist, their joy at seeing NATO and the Taleban slugging at each other there in the mountains would not be unbounded, or endless. Especially because the West's position in the fight now seems so very, very precarious, bringing us closer to the point where its forces might actually need to be bailed out if the whole world-- including of course, those front-line Asian nations-- is not to be faced with a massive growth of Taleban/Qaeda-style power.
I have tried to think like a Pentagon planner, too. Pakistan is crucial to the US-led fight against the Taleban-- not just because it has its own Talebs and provides a safe haven for the Talebs from Afghanistan, but also because a huge proportion of the military and support materiel the Western forces in Afghanistan rely on is shipped in along the land routes through Pakistan. (75%, according to this November report.)
Alert JWN readers will recall this post I published here December 17, taking note of and commenting on the report the WaPo ran that same day, to the effect that planners in the US military were already starting to call for a hastened shifting of focus and troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Bhutto's killing will probably make such a shift seem even more urgent. However, all the questions I raised in that earlier post about whether simply adding more US troops into support of a pacification campaign in Afghanistan that does not look designed or headed for success-- and may indeed be actually unwinnable in the way it is currently being waged-- still stand.
I see that a researcher at the usually very sober Congressional Research Service wrote in this recent (PDF) report on the NATO campaign in Afghanistan that
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think there are some interesting geostrategic parallels between the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In both, you have the US leading an intentionally non-UN "coalition of the willing" (COTW) that is fighting a non-winning pacification campaign in the middle of a country marked by huge political complexity, very high levels of violence, and state bodies that are not able to deliver any services at all to the vast majority of the country's national territory.
In both countries, too, you have the leaders of other nearby countries sitting by, watching with some degree of satisfaction as the US-led COTW grinds itself deeper and deeper into the quagmire-- but these countries also don't want the US's most determined opponents in either country to win, either... So there is some careful calibrating that these neighbors need to do. Above all, they don't want to make it impossible for the US to "ask" them to come to its aid if the present COTW's situation should start to fall apart very rapidly-- which it might, in either Iraq, or Afghanistan.
In Iraq, the main neighbors sitting in this position are Iran (and Syria.) But in Afghanistan, it seems to me the geostrategic stakes are even higher, since China and Russia are both among the neighbors who are currently sitting there in "watchful waiting" mode...
We Quakers do not observe any liturgical calendar. (Nor do we have a liturgy.) But here in the US we are part of a culture that is very Christmas-oriented, and it anyway feels good here in the northern hemisphere to mark the turn of the solstice and the fact that the days will now, finally start to get longer again.
Let there be light!
Anyway, according to the traditional western-church calendar, we are now in Christmas Season-- on the Third Day of Christmas, indeed. So can I wish a Happy Christmas and/or a Cool Yule, or a Light-filled Solstice, or (belatedly) an Eid Mubarak or Happy Hannukah to all JWN readers.
Bill and I have been blessed to have a house full of family for the past few days: Nine people in all. Being able to hold regular family get-togethers is such a privilege, I know. Our family members came here to Charlottesville, Virginia from Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and Dorset (UK.) All that bad, high-emissions air travel.... sorry about that.
Anyway, I'll try to get back to more frequent blogging either later today, or tomorrow.
May 2008 be a great year for all readers, and especially may it bring about the radical de-esclation or resolution of the many conflicts now burdening humanity. (Sadly, not good news today from Pakistan, about Benazir B's assassination.)
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer yesterday became the third member of the Israeli government-- after Shaul Mofaz and Ami Ayalon-- to support the idea of negotiations with Hamas over a ceasefire between Gaza and Israel. Ben-Eliezer also told Israel's Army Radio that he thought Olmert might well be open to such a deal.
Like Mofaz, Ben-Eliezer is also a former high-ranking IDF officer and a former defense Minister. He was also, 2001-2002, leader of the Labour Party when it was in a coalition government led by Ariel Sharon. (Ayalon). For his part, Ayalon was the head of Israel's naval forces and later head of the Shin Bet spy service. These men are notably not soft-'n'-fuzzy peaceniks. Okay, well maybe Ayalon has become a bit of one over the ones. But neither Mofaz nor Ben-Eliezer is.
In an eery example of what the Indian peace mediator Dr. Ranabir Samaddar recently noted was a common pattern in negotiations between a government and a non-governmental group, several men in the IDF's current leadership have been arguing that "Hamas is only open to negotiations because we have started hitting Gaza; therefore we should hit even harder!"
Mofaz is the only former-Likudnik Kadima Party person among the three pro-negotiations ministers; the other two are from Labour. Meanwhile the leader of the Labour Party, current defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Labour's Methuselah-like State President (and former war-launching PM) Shimon Peres are reported to remain opposed to any negotiations with Hamas.
The question of whether there or are not ongoing ceasefire talks, and if so, whether they will lead anywhere, remains murky. From the Israeli side, the government has come under considerable pressure in recent months to "do something" about the primitive but occasionally damaging home-made rockets that (mainly non-Hamas) militants in Gaza have been launching against locations inside Israel-- and about the 18-month holding by Gaza militants of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. But as PM Olmert and all of Israel's military and political leadership learned in Lebanon in 2006, it is not easy to figure out what you can "do" against a determined, well organized population, to decisively and lastingly win you your desired political goals, if the only weapon you have is a bloated and mega-lethal military force.
Can Israel step up its air or naval attacks against Gaza? Not easily-- and especially as long as Bush and Rice seem determined to keep alive the picture that they are "seriously engaged" in brokering a Palestinian-Israeli peace.
Can Israel do more to impose economic collective punishment on the people of Gaza? Not easily.
Can Israel send in the ground forces to rapidly "root out" all the Palestinian militants, and rescue Shalit in some kind of heroic, Entebbe-like way? Clearly not. If they had had any confidence they could use ground forces for either of these missions, they certainly would have done so a long time ago... Instead, the repeated, relatively small-scale ground-force raids they have made into Gaza (1) have not succeeded in either silencing the rocketeers or rescuing Shalit, and (2) have apparently persuaded the IDF's leaders that a bigger ground-force raid would not succeed, either.
Also, as the IDF and political leaders seem clearly to judge at this point, mounting a complete physical re-occupation of the whole of Gaza at ground level would be several bridges too far for the IDF (and the country.) So the options available to Olmert and Co. seem to be limited to two:
or (b) try to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas that would restore some calm to the Israeli communities around Gaza-- and would necessarily involve allowing the people of Gaza to also have a more normal life.
On the latter question, the Crisis Group has recently published this very thorough report on one of the major issues in internal Gaza politics, that is the power-balance there between Hamas and the many local "families" or clans whose feuds and vendettas have often in recent years dominated the Strip's (in-)security situation.
The inter-"family" violence remained particularly virulent in Gaza so long as those big clans there could try to maneuver between the Fateh and Hamas militias' presence. (I wrote about this some here, in 2004.) Indeed, the ICG report also makes clear that Fateh played quite a large-- if not always intentional-- role in increasing the armament level of the families quite considerably. However, after the Hamas takeover in Gaza in June, Hamas moved quickly to try to contain and disarm the families. The report notes that these moves met with some resistance. But it also says, (p.16),
And now, we should also remember that it is almost exactly a year since the Bush administration worked actively with the Somali warlords and the government of neighboring Ethiopia to send in an Ethiopian military force to oust the ICU from power.
Since December 2006, the situation in Somalia, which had become somewhat stabilized under the ICU, has deteriorated catastrophically...
UN-OCHA reported yesterday that the number of people "displaced from Mogadishu since the end of October due to ongoing conflict between Ethiopian/Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces and anti-government elements" has now reached 265,000... Read the whole of that report
to learn more about the human costs suffered by some of the world's most indigent and hardest-pressed communities when the US pursues its militarized (and warlord-supporting) form of anti-Islamism at their expense.
AP's Sarah el-Deeb has an intriguing story on the wire today with background about a ceasefire proposal that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh transmitted Tuesday to a reporter for Israel's Channel 2 t.v., Suleiman al-Shafi. This, while Haaretz reports today that Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz-- who was previously first the IDF chief of staff and then briefly Defense Minister-- has said publicly that, "Israel should not rule out indirect negotiations with Hamas in an effort to halt Qassam rocket fire at southern Israel."
Interesting if the ceasefire overture should work out, huh? I shan't hold my breath for it-- yet. Defense Minister Ehud Barak still seems to be making some fairly hard-line noises about Gaza... But who knows?
Deeb writes:
"I am always trying to stop the rockets from all factions, especially Islamic Jihad, but Israel's assassinations always catch me off guard and spoil my attempts," the reporter quoted Haniyeh as saying.
Al-Shafi said he was surprised by the phone call and was unable to record the conversation...
In both cases, those Israeli leaders were arrogant enough to think that if, after having the IDF/IOF rule over great chunks of other people's lands in a very brutal way for many years they just upped and pulled their troops out in an un-negotiated way, then they would thereafter be bound by none of the form of international commitments that would have been involved had they sought to negotiate their departure... And thus, they would retain considerable flexibility to be able to re-enter the evacuated terrain at will or use other violent methods against it in an attempt to quash the emergence of any bodies seeking revenge or even just some plain accountability for the many preceding years of suffering, or using violent means to continue to pursue some of their significant but still notably unaddressed grievances against Israel.
In Lebanon, that "un-negotiated withdrawal" tactic worked-- to a degree. After the 2000 withdrawal a form of mutual deterrence rapidly emerged between Israel and the Hizbullah forces that had been responsible for making Israel's lengthy occupation of the country too painful to be continued. But we can also note that, though there were never any formal negotiations between Israel and Hizbullah, in fact in both 1993 and 1996, Israel was only able to extricate itself from very damaging military positions inside Lebanon by concluding indirect ceasefires with Hizbullah that had been negotiated through the good offices of the governments of the US, Lebanon, and Syria.
Regarding Gaza, Israel has remained generally steadfastly opposed to concluding any kind of similar indirect negotiation with Hamas. Heck! It was even quite unwilling to do so with Pres. Mahmoud Abbas when he was still in charge of Gaza back in 2005.
Regarding Gaza, there is an additional question over how any indirect negotiations could be conducted. I highly doubt that Abu Mazen would want to be the conduit for them; but the Egyptian government might well be ready to do that.
As for the US, whose illustrious president is going to be visiting Israel very soon: what could we expect his attitude to be to the prospect of Israel engaging in some form of indirect negotiations with Hamas? Well, you could (re-)read the opening paragraphs of my recent Nation article on the need to talk to Hamas and Hizbullah to see what I think about that...
Two or three of you have recently written that you can't get the whole JWN front page when using the upgraded IE browser, which I guess is IE-7. I don't know what to suggest you might do. I vaguely recall a while back some readers had a similar problem with IE, and other readers suggested a fix for it. All I can suggest is to steer clear of IE and use Firefox, my own browser of choice.
If anyone else has suggestions, please post them as a comment here. Thanks!
I had a 3-hour-plus bus-ride this afternoon from Charlottesville to Washington DC, so I had a good chance to read the weighty study titled The Second Lebanon War: Strategic Perspectives that my friends at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (formerly the Jaffee Center) mailed to me. One of the co-editors in Shlomo Bron, whose previous work has usually seemed to me to be pretty clear-eyed, forward-looking, and non-ideological. And taken as a whole this latest volume lives up to his reputation.
The INSS's decision to publish the report now is notable because the Winograd Commission, which is Israel's official commission of enquiry into the leadership shortcomings revealed during the war, recently indicated that it has postponed publication of its final, definitive report, for a second time. The report, which is now expected to be made public "within a few weeks", is also expected to have broad political repurcussions inside Israel, most likely including stepped-up efforts to bring down PM Ehud Olmert.
In the INSS book I was delighted, first of all, to see that basically, the key judgments made by its authors about what the war was about, and what its outcome was, tracked almost exactly with the judgments I made in this article on the topic, that I wrote in September 2006 and that appeared in the Nov-Dec 2006 issue of Boston Review. (Note to BR editors!! Please can you get the typo in that sub-title fixed!!)
Here's what I wrote there:
Both sides won the first contest. The ceasefire that went into effect August 14 has proved remarkably robust. Given that no outside force has been in a position to compel compliance, that robustness must reflect the reemergence of an effective system of mutual deterrence.
In the second contest, however, Nasrallah has emerged the clear winner. Indeed, not only did Olmert fail completely in his bid to persuade Beirut to crack down on Hizbullah, but the destructive power that the Israeli air force unleashed upon Lebanon significantly strengthened Hizbullah’s political position.
For example, on p.50 he spelled out that, "The Israel Defense Forces was the entity that proposed the list of political goals to the government." Interesting, huh? (On p.29, Giora Eiland, who had been head of the National Security Council under Sharon, made clear that, "In the government meeting held on July 12, 2006, immediately after news of the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah, the IDF presented its recommendations. Government ministers were placed in a situation where they had only two options: either approve or reject the military’s proposal. Non-approval meant not doing anything, something which on that day was perceived as
impossible. The outcome was clear...")
Anyway, Romm also presented what seems to be a verbatim version of this list of goals. Here it is:
2. To strike a significant blow against Hizbollah’s military capability and status, and thereby put an end to terrorism originating from Lebanon.
3. To strengthen the deterrence vis-à-vis Hizbollah and the entire region.
4. To correct the prevailing system in Lebanon, based on an effective enforcement mechanism that is supported by international involvement (this was later changed to “have the Lebanese government use the Lebanese army to impose its sovereignty over its entire
territory”).
5. To foster auspicious conditions for freeing the kidnapped IDF soldiers.
6. To accomplish these ends while keeping Syria out of the war.
2. The total number of attack missions flown during the fighting was greater than in the Yom Kippur War.
3. The total number of combat helicopter missions flown was double the number flown in the first Lebanon war [1982], Operation Accountability [Lebanon again, 1993], and Operation Grapes of Wrath [Lebanon yet again, 1996] combined.
4. The air force depleted its supply of certain types of armaments, resulting in a need for immediate stocks from overseas. [Oh, guess where from!]
On p.52, Romm presents what is presumably the IDF's official count of how many Katyushas were fired against Israel on each day of the war. The daily average was probably a little over 100. What is notable from this chart is also that (1) There were indeed two days-- July 31 and August 1-- when Hizbullah fired no rockets; (there was an attempt at a humanitarian ceasefire in that period. Hizbullah kept to it. Israel did not.) Also, (2) There was apparently no rocket-firing after the Resolution 1701 ceasefire finally went into effect at dawn on August 14, but on the 13th, Huzbullah ramped up a sizeable "last salvo" of 250 rockets-- presumably as a way to hammering home the "deterrent message" it wanted to send to Israelis, very similar to the hard-hitting one that the IDF tried to deliver to the Lebanese people in the last 48 hours before the ceasefire went into effect.
What that record also shows quite clearly is that throughout the whole war, and until and after its end, Hizbullah's command-and-control systems continued in operation, essentially undented by the assault Israel had launched against them. (Several of the authors remark on that fact.)
In Appendix 2, Yiftah Shapir writes that the Israeli police reported that a total of 3,970 rockets landed on Israel during the war. On p.223, he adds that 52 "home front people" were killed by these rockets. A total of 2,412 "home front casualties" were reported, of which 1,318 were cases of clinical shock.
... Well, there is a lot more fascinating material in the book, but I'm afraid I don't have time to tell you about it all right now. Still, because the full text is available (as a PDF) there online, you can go and read it yourselves, and we can carry on discussing it here.
Bottom line: Raw military superiority just ain't as effective now as it used to be. Hey, friends in Israel, maybe negotiating workable final peace agreements with all your neighbors would be a better way to proceed??
The Bush administration finally seems to be waking up to the need to (1) find a more effective policy in Afghanistan, and (2) if necessary, recalibrate its commitments in Iraq in an attempt to salvage/stabilize the situation in Afghanistan. (Read further down this post to learn why I judge that this latter task can't actually be accomplished.)
In an important story in today's WaPo, M. Abramowitz and P. Baker indicate very clearly that in Washington the pressure for an Iraq/Afghanistan recalibration is coming primarily from within the US military. This makes the decisionmaking process in Washington DC look strikingly like that in London in fall 2006, when British Army Chief of Staff Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt spoke out forcefully in public in favor of a swift shifting of British troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.
(Except that Dannatt seemed to have more guts and self-confidence in speaking out openly than anyone in the US military leadership currently seems to have.)
Britain handed over control of security in Basra province to the Iraqi "government" yesterday, retaining only a small British force at Basra airport. Read this commentary from Patrick Cockburn on why Britain's five-year-long mission in Basra could never have succeeded, and on the damage it inflicted on the people of the province-- and on Britain's own military reputation.
Once you've read that, expand the concept of "Basra" to the level of "the whole of Iraq" and you can see that the US's campaign in Iraq could similarly never have succeeded-- and also that the damage it has inflicted on the people of Iraq and on the US's military reputation (and its raw capabilities) have all been correspondingly much larger in scale than what happened to the Brits in Basra.
Back in October 2006, I was hopeful that the "Dannatt effect" had already, back then, started to spread to the US generals. Maybe it did, somewhat, in terms of their own internal analysis of the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the corresponding need to shift emphasis from the former theater to the latter. But in terms of infusing the US Joint Chief of Staff with the courage needed to stand up for their professional standards and the confidence they had in their analytical/strategic judgments? No. Sadly, no serving US military leaders has shown anything like the forthright courage that Dannatt displayed last year.
In Baker and Abramowitz's piece, for example, no serving military officer is quoted by name as saying anything that indicates a need to draw resources and attention away from Iraq to Afghanistan. The only relevant reference to statements coming from a named, serving officer is this one:
Well, be that as it may, there is obviously a lot that needs to be said about the realization that is now, finally, starting to dawn within the Bush administration that invading Iraq may well all along have been, at a strategic level, a very damaging "bridge too far"-- even for the world's (now rapidly declining) Uberpower.
We need to look carefully at these key aspects of this issue:
2. The validity of the judgment-call so many people seem to be making that the US-led effort in Afghanistan should take priority over the US-led effort in Afghanistan. What, actually, are the geostrategic issues at stake in each theater? Can the US hope to "win" in Afghanistan by a continuation of its current "Coalition of the Willing" approach there?
3. If the US does draw down its force level in Iraq significantly faster than Bush has so far been planning, what are the prospects for the strategic balance of the Persian Gulf region?
On the first question, this post that Barnett Rubin had over at the Informed Comment Global Affairs blog over the weekend contains some useful background information.
He notes the recent calls that some people have made for a new, and possibly non-US "high-level coordinator" to be appointed for Afghanistan. (Is Paddy Ashdown, my sister's former MP from in Somerset who was thenthe "high level coordinator" for Bosnia, running activelyfor this job?) But then, Rubin comments:
(In the comments section on Rubin's post, Don Bacon writes pithily: "Multilateral armed Euro-centric colonialism. Once they work the bugs out it'll be coming to a theater near you... ")
In contrast to Bacon, far too many western commentators still think and write about Afghanistan and related matters in a totally west-centric and self-referential way.
Just remember, dear readers, where Afghanistan lies on the map. It has a short direct border with China, and a long border with the former Soviet Union-- that is nowadays occupied by a clutch of "Stans" that act as, essentially either buffer-states or zones of contention and competition between the US-led COTW forces in Afghanistan and the Russian Republic itself.
Afghanistan is many thousands of miles from the US and Australia, and also pretty darn far from Europe.
The thinking in Washington and Brussels currently seems to be trending toward the idea that the COTW needs to cut its losses so that it can then go on and "win" in Afghanistan. I certainly support the idea that the COTW needs to withdraw completely, and speedily from Iraq-- though for very different reasons.
However, I also judge that the idea that the COTW can "win" in Afghanistan is completely chimeric-- for a number of reasons, including these:
2. The COTW has certainly not yet shown that it has the leadership skills-- including the internal-coordination skills, the "vision", or the raw counter-insurgency skills-- that would be needed to "win" in Afghanistan.
3. It is anyway very hard to define what it would mean to "win" there. Stabilization? Democratization? Eradication of the Taliban? Their successful inclusion in the governing coalition? Other?
4. Russia and China are rising powers that both have strong interests in the Afghanistan region and veto power on the Security Council. What is their incentive to see a US-led COTW "win" in Afghanistan? Would they not, almost certainly, prefer to be "cut in" on a deal to stabilize Afghanistan and to do so through a pan-UN initiative rather than a Washington-dominated COTW? And so long as they (and the UN) are marginalized from any effective role in decisionmaking regarding Afghanistan, why would they not prefer to see NATO pull itself part there, and US power-projection capabilities similarly being degraded there?
Bottom line: even if the COTW took all its forces from Iraq and sent them to Afghanistan, even if the US public and economy were able to raise an additional 100,000 troops to send there or NATO countries were somehow able to come up with that number of new troops-- the COTW still can't on its own "win"in Afghanistan.
We might remember, too, that for most of the 19th century, Afghanistan was the key locus of the contest between Russian, Chinese, and British (in India) power called the "Great Game." In the 1980s, it was the key locus in the global Cold War. It will most likely play a similarly crucial role in the global politics of the 21st century. It's time that the US punditocracy stopped thinking in such an unrealistic (and provincially minded) way about the place.
Time, too, that the US political elites as a whole stopped living with the dangerous delusion that projection of military power to distant places is an effective way to secure our people's true national interests...
Okay, on reviewing this, I see I still haven't even started to deal with a number of the points raised in the above survey. (Including but not limited to the question of what happens in the Gulf region after a US withdrawal from Iraq.)
Basically, the analysis I'm starting to come to is that, just as there are now increasing numbers of people talking about the need, at the level of the Gulf and the greater Middle East, to explore the terms of a possible US-Iran "grand bargain" that would address and resolve all the many remaining issues of contention/concern between them, so too is there a need at the broader level for an entirely new US-world "grand bargain" that would address the many thorny security/political problems outstanding between "the west and the rest" concerning the Gulf, Afghanistan, and many other issues.
This is, as it happens, one of the big themes that I address in my upcoming book, on US foreign policy after Bush. But maybe the acuity of the situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan means we need to do a lot more rigorous thinking about this issue right now.
(Note - this is Scott writing.)
Independent thinkers, activists, and peacemakers have lost a friend in the passing yesterday of Dan Fogelberg. Just 56, Dan "the artist" Fogelberg succumbed to a long battle with prostate cancer.
To be sure, Dan Fobelberg is most famous for his soft-rock hits: tales of loves (Longer, Since you've asked); loves lost (The Long Way, Tell me to my face); and greed gone bad (Sutter's Mill). Dan will also likely be "immortal" for tributes to New Years (Same Old Lang Syne); to the Kentucky Derby horses (Run for the Roses); to Geogia O'Keefe (Bones in the Sky); to under-appreciated fathers everywhere (The Leader of the Band); to abandoned seniors (Windows & Walls) and to the renewing power of nature (To the Morning).
Fogelberg's range across 20 albums was extraordinary; he could do sappy (Wysteria), driving rock (As the Raven Flies), classical (Netherlands), jazz (Holy Road), or blue grass (High Country Snow).
I encountered his music long before he became a pop icon, via a progressive free-spirit who prized his early albums.
For one of her art classes, I had the "honor" of having my portrait painted via Fogelberg's frame from his Souvenirs album cover. :-} She got an "A" for my embarrassment.
When I saw her dance to Fogelberg's "Dancing Shoes," I was smitten, a "pas de deux forever." I sometimes wondered if she was one "who lived somewhere in Pennsylvania" in my favorite bittersweet ballad, "The Last Nail." Two decades later, I witnessed one of Dan's last major concerts - at Wolftrap, Virginia -- one of the most incredible one person performances ever.
For all his fame, Fogelberg had an unflinching independent streak -- a willingness to write for the sake of his art, not for sales; for what was on his heart, even if it ran headlong into political gales.
Consider "The Power of Gold,"
Balance the cost of the soul you lost
With the dreams you lightly sold
Then tell me that you're free of the power of gold
or "Face the Fire" (theme song for the anti-nuclear resistance.)
I hear the thunder three miles away
The Island's leaking into the bay
The poison is spreading
The demon is free
And people are running from what they can't even see
or "Democracy" (1993 on the Portrait album),
Now there's people living out in the street
Going hungry with no shoes on their feet
While the government just twiddles its thumbs
And spends more money on guns
And they keep on planning nuclear war
Tell me who is it they're planning it for
If not the men that make their profits from hate
I swear it seems they can't wait
Is this what democracy means?
or "A Voice for Peace."
You know that everybody has a voice
And how they use it is their own free choice
But in your glory I will not rejoice
If you choose the ways of war...
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
My country 'tis of thee; in God we trust
But how much longer will he shelter us
While we choose the ways of war
While the winds of war rage on
Let mine (oh let my small voice) be a voice for peace
May such a spirit be his "living legacy." Quaker "Friends" may especially like "the light" in Nexus (written long before we'd heard of Lexus)
Across the vein of night there cuts a path of searing light
Burning like a beacon on the edges of our sight
At the point of total darkness and the lights divine divide
A soul can let its shadow stretch and land on either side
Yet Fogelberg had his dark moments, as in The River,
I was raised by a river
Weaned upon the sky
And in the mirror of the waters
I saw myself learn to cry....
I will die by a river
As it rolls away
Bury me in the nighttime
Do not waste the day.
Years later, he'd become far more sanguine about life's trails, as in the widely copied, "Along the Road:"
Along the road
Your steps may tumble
Your thoughts may start to stray
But through it all a heart held humble
Levels and lights your way.
I'm having my own "old lang syne moment," listening to Dan's quite "different" Christmas album - a favorite here in our house. Try listening to the track 8 instrumental, "snowfall," without something tugging deep inside.
Ten years ago, Dan appended "Ever On" to a four disk collection of his music: (Portrait). It's a fitting benediction:
May the trail rise up to meet you
May your heart rejoice in song
May the skies be fair above you
As you journey ever on.
Ever on--ever on....
May your love be there to guide usMay it always keep us strong
May we walk within your footsteps
As you lead us ever on.
Ever on Dan.... ever on.
Every so often, the WaPo does some real good. They are doing so this weekend, with the publication of two articles that throw some much-needed light on the intense harm that the 60-year record of no-peace in the Middle East continues to inflict on the Palestinians.
The first of these is Scott Wilson's piece of news reporting in today's paper on some aspects of how the 1.4 million Palestinian residents of Gaza have been suffering under the brutally tight economic siege that Israel has maintained on them since-- well, at some level, since 1967, though the screws tightened noticeably in 2000, then again in 2002, and even more so right after the Palestinian legislative elections of January 2006 gave a robust plurality to an organization not to Israel's liking, namely Hamas.
Wilson focuses his reporting on the effects the siege has had on the deaf Palestinian children who receive teaching and some bare social services through the amazing organization Atfaluna ("Our children"). Long-time JWN readers may recall that for some years now, I have been involved with a group here in Virginia that helps to sell the beautiful craft products that Atfaluna's people create. This fall, againk they were miraculously able to fulfill the order we had placed. But Wilson says they are fast running out of the necessary raw materials-- as well as out of the batteries the kids need for their hearing-aids and many other basic services.
He also writes about dialysis patients at a nearby clinic having their sessions cut from three times a week to twice a week, about cancer patients dying because they are refused entry to Israeli hospitals, and about the anger of the Palestinians at the collective punishment to which they continue to be subjected-- despite all the fine words voiced at the recent Annapolis conference.
(And yes, he gives quite appropriate coverage to the arguments made by Israeli officials as to why they have been maintaining this siege on Gaza. Does the WaPo always feel similarly obliged to cover the arguments that Palestinians make when they undertake actions that harm Israelis? I think not. But I'm glad Wilson does this here. It underlines the conundrum people and governments face when they take actions to deal with their own insecurities that-- by increasing the insecurity of others-- end up simply increasing and entrenching the security "threat" that they themselves face. Strategic analysts give this piece of elementary human-affairs logic the fancy name of "security dilemma.")
Wilson quotes Gerry Shawa, the formidably effective and visionary American-Palestinian woman who runs Atfaluna as saying of the Israelis: "I hold each of them responsible, just as they obviously seem to hold all of us responsible...If the Israeli government really has the power and the desire to change, well, this is pushing me in exactly the opposite way -- over the edge."
... The second good WaPo piece is this heavily reported piece of "commentary" from Nir Rosen about the situation of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. It will be in Sunday's paper, but is already available on the web.
Nir describes some of the scenes he witnessed over the summer in and around the refugee camp at Nahr al-Bared, near the north Lebanese city of Tripoli, at the time when the Lebanese army was bombarding the whole camp in its brutal campaign against the extremists of a splinter group called "Fateh al-Islam."
He wrote:
... I saw videos filmed by Lebanese soldiers on the Internet, showing army medical staff abusing corpses and beating prisoners. Hundreds of Palestinians had been abused or tortured in Lebanese detention, according to human rights groups, and refugees told me that some had died from medical neglect of treatable wounds.
The refugees still faced harassment and the occasional beating by Lebanese soldiers. Nobody is helping them, but rather than giving up, hundreds of Palestinians were at work emptying their homes of debris and trying to get on with their lives.
A series of subsequent peace processes has ignored the refugees, offered no compensation for their suffering and lost property, or refused to recognize their right to return to their homes in their homeland. It's not just the Israelis who have brutalized them; Palestinian refugees have been massacred in Jordan and Lebanon. Small numbers have become so radicalized that they have gone on to fight the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In Lebanon... the refugee problem has never really left center stage.
For my part, I would add simply that these two articles both underscore the great importance of making sure that the issue of the Palestinian refugees gets adequately dealt with during the whole of the post-Annapolis peace negotiations, and that it is not simply left to the end, which was one of the major reasons for the failure of all previous peace efforts. A strong numerical majority of the Palestinian people have been forced by the Israelis or others to live either as exiles completely outside their ancestral homeland, or as refugees from their ancestral homes though still technically within the boundaries of Mandate Palestine, or both. (Somewhere around 80% of the population of Gaza is made up of refugees, so it is likely that a high proportion of the kids in Atfaluna's programs there come from refugee families.)
There is no way, politically, that any final peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians can "stick" and provide a sustainable base for longterm peace if the claims of the refugee Palestinians are not addressed in a way that the vast majority of these chronically mistreated people judge to be satisfactory. This is not an impossible task-- though it gets harder by the day, and will continue to do so as long as Israel continues to seize and hold onto control of additional portions of the West Bank area that, along with seriously over-crowded Gaza, is the only area left in which to base the independent state that was promised to the Palestinian Arabs back in 1947.
I wrote recently on JWN about one effort, made by something called the "Aix Group", to craft a mutually acceptable resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue. Go check that out-- and some of the other points I made in that blog post.
Exciting news from the UN's Bali conference on climate change. The conference went into an unscheduled extra day of work Saturday, and at the very last minute the US delegation withdrew the objections it had sustained steadfastly, allowing adoption of the painstakingly negotiated final document to proceed.
CNN describes the scene thus:
While rhetoric at such conferences is often just words, a short speech by a delegate from the small developing country of Papua New Guinea appeared to carry weight with the Americans. The delegate challenged the United States to "either lead, follow or get out of the way."
Just five minutes later, when it appeared the conference was on the brink of collapse, Dobriansky took to the floor again to announce the United States was willing to accept the arrangement. Applause erupted in the hall and a relative level of success for the conference appeared certain.
In Bali, a later dispute then erupted between, basically, the world's rich-- and historically very highly emitting-- nations and the low-income nations grouped in the "Group of 77". (Which guess what, represents many more people than the "G-8".)
I've been interested to note that within the G-77 it was India that took the lead in this fight, with China cleverly staying a little out of sight. See e.g. this Daily Telegraph report.
As far as I can figure, the Bali Statement commits the world's governments to completing an agreement on the post-Kyoto climate-change plan before the end of 2009. Kyoto is due to run out in 2012.
US citizens who are concerned that the position of our own next president should be one that is engaged deeply and constructively with the global anti-warming effort therefore need to use 2008 to make sure that this issue is kept on the front burner of our country's political discussions throughout next year's election campaign, and to push candidates to commit to climate change policies that are equitable, effective, and forward-leaning.
I can note that back in the 1990s, Pres. Bill Clinton used the US's then-considerable strategic muscle to bend the text of Kyoto in a pro-US direction-- and then decided to do nothing to try to win ratification for the Protocol from the US Congress.
Guess what: other countries' people and governments noticed and remembered that sad (and one could even say somewhat duplicitous) performance.
And then came George W. Bush, who along with his side-dick, VP Cheney, derided the whole notion that international agreements with measurable targets had any useful role to play at all.
Climate change is one crucial arena-- along with nuclear weapons-- in which the wellbeing and survival of US citizens are seen as very clearly inter-reliant with the survival and wellbeing of the rest of the world's 6 billion people. We are all in this frail boat together.
Luckily, many US citizens seem finally to be waking up to this fact-- even if they are not yet ready to acknowledge either the scale of the damage our country's past emissions have caused to the rest of the world or the depth of the changes in lifestyles and mindsets that will be required to bring our emissions down to a globally-proportionate and reabsorbable level.
But still, it is good that increasing numbers of Americans are starting to think about these things and that there a number of nationwide groups doing good, solid organizing around them... Good, too, that we have increasingly potent and well-organized friends around the world who will help to persuade Washington to get with the global anti-warming program.
I was horrified, however, to see the "business as usual" news judgment being displayed by the WaPo this morning, when it buried its coverage of the globally important, cliffhanging proceedings of the Bali conference to deep down at the bottom of p.17. What were they thinking?
Were they thinking?
The UNFCCC, the body that convened the Bali gathering, has a web-page that directs you to a fascinating array of news coverage of its work from all around the world. You can bet that most of those other media outlets linked to there did not bury the Bali news deep beneath the rest of their stories.
I am very interested in what we can learn about the current state of world politics from watching the current UN Climate Change conference in Bali, Indonesia. The biggest dispute there today was reportedly between the US (with a few supporters) and the Europeans.
Bush is still proceeding with his 'coalition-of-the-willing" type of approach to dealing with the climate change issue. The basic idea of COTW, regarding climate change, nuclear non- (or counter-) proliferation, invading Iraq, or any other issue is that it is (a) always US-led, and (b) intentionally opposed to the kind of true multilateralism in which the US like all other parties commits itself to reciprocally binding agreements.
Bush's first attempt to use COTW with regard to climate change was notably to stay out of the Kyoto Protocol, and to urge/encourage other governments to do likewise. (So you might also call it Coalition of the Unwilling, I suppose.)
Then in June, at the G-8 summit in Green-strong Germany, he proposed this notably non-UN gathering of "industrial nations" that would be convened by the US to discuss the issue. The invitees politely went along, but sent only very low-level people to the meeting, which was held in the US in September.
Bush did at least agree to send administration officials to the current UN gathering in Bali, where the main task is to negotiate a follow-on to the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012. But the US official delegation dug in its heels in opposition to the idea of any mention of actual targets for the CO2 emission reduction. Washington apparently has the support of Canada, Japan, and Russia in the anti-targets position it has adopted. Also, Australia's newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has signaled that he wants to back the US position, which is particularly sad given that many of his supporters back home had hoped that his election would mark an end to Australia slavishly following Washington in its foreign policy errors.
The EU, which favors targets, has now come flat out and accused Washington of being the main obstacle to success in Bali.
We can note that this is at a time of increasing disagreement between the US and many European nations over Afghanistan, as well, with US Defense Secretary Bob Gates publicly criticising the Europeans for not sending enough troops to Afghanistan.
In Bali, the Chinese seem to be sitting outside the main arena of the EU-US conflict. This Reuters article from Bali says,
I have a suggestion. The US is still a huge weight within the world community. I truly don't think the US is going to be a force for constructive engagement on climate issues so long as GWB is president. Kyoto-- with all its flaws-- runs until 2012. I realize that the post-Kyoto arrangement will take time to implement. But couldn't we all just postpone the next round of Bali negotiations till after January 2009? Even if that would delay arriving at an agreement by, say, 15 months, and might delay being able to implement the agreement reached by something like that period of time, wouldn't it be better to wait till we have a person in the White House who is open to the idea of mutually binding multilateral agreements, and less fixated on the dreadful and nearly always very damaging COTWs?
We should remember, too, that the effects of global warming are already posing life-and-death risks to large populations in a number of countries-- and might well pose a risk to international peace and security within just the next few years. If the US persists in its stubborn and selfish pursuit of "CO2 emissions R Us", then the rest of the world would have every right to impose sanctions against us until such time as our country stops poisoning the six billion people who live outside our borders.
I went to a talk that Juan Cole gave at the Middle East Institute here in Washington DC, this morning. The talk was along the lines that there are currently three simultaneous civil wars underway inside Iraq-- and that the US has very little to do with any of them.
The first one he identified was the intra-Shia struggle for control of Basra. He noted, of course, the great strategic role that Basra plays within the whole country-- as chokepoint for a large proportion of the imports going into it and, crucially, of the oil exports going out of it.
The second was the Sunni-Shia struggle for control over Baghdad. Here, his assessment seemed to be that the main effect of this year's US military "surge" had been to disarm and weaken the Sunnis in Baghdad and the surrounding areas and thereby to hand a large victory-- at least at the demographic level-- to the Shiites there. (I have a few questions about this analysis, but it's not bad as a first approximation perhaps.)
The third is the looming confrontation between Kurds and all others over control of Kirkuk, its surrounding province, and other areas of north-central Iraq including Mosul.
Now, I'll confess I had to leave the session after the first couple of questions had been asked and answered. So maybe Juan covered the following points after I left. But my main queries about what he said had to do with his contention that the US has "little or no role" in these three intra-Iraqi tussles for power.
Indeed, in the main body of his presentation, he presented considerable counter-evidence to that thesis-- including when he talked about the effects of the surge in Baghdad and in his repeated references to the large amount of support the US has given to SCIRI/IISC/Badr ever since 2003.
At a broader level, too, it is evident that none of these conflicts would have assumed anything like their current very violent and destructive form if there had been a functioning, national-level administration within the country-- either a functioning national government, or a military occupation regime that took seriously its responsibilities under international law to provide effective administration of the country.
Note that I am absolutely not claiming that under Saddam Hussein there was no inter-group violence within the country. There certainly was; and during a number of specific periods it took on an extremely atrocious form. But we could note that from about 2000 onwards, there was very little lethal inter-group conflict inside the country. All potential parties to that had perhaps become worn out by the combination of the effects of past bouts of atrocious violence and the horrendous, grinding-down effects of many years of tough (and, actually, also mega-lethal) sanctions.
The US invasion and (mis-)occupation of the country reignited all the old inter-group hatreds and probably created some new ones as well. It gave a virtual carte blanche to vindictive groups like SCIRI and other Shiite factions and the Kurdish factions. (Remember the terrible mishandling of the "trial" and execution of Saddam Hussein, almost exactly one year ago today?) And most importantly, the US occupation completely failed to do anything effective to ensure the orderly administration of the country, leaving private groups bent on revenge for past sufferings free to roam the country at will.
So maybe Juan is correct at some technical, or "surface", level to say that the US has very little connection on a day-to-day basis with the inter-group violence that is now, still, roiling Iraq. But none of us should take that to mean that the US-- its government and its citizens-- don't still bear a massive, ongoing responsibility for the suffering there.
We do. Under international law and under general notions of responsibility and morality.
Trying to find a way to make up for the harm we have inflicted needs to start with a clear declaration that the US intends to get out of the country completely, and at the earliest possible opportunity. Then let's work with the other nations of the world-- including, certainly, Iraq and all of its neighbors-- to find a way to design our withdrawal that will optimize the chances for stability in Iraq and the region as we leave. Under these circumstances, I am worried that too many people, listening to Juan's analysis, might just shrug and say, "Well, we're not really part of that violence there; we're not responsible for what's going on there any more... And besides, the Iraqis just have all these 'primitive' and ancient hatreds. Let them pursue them however they want. Whether we go or stay won't make any difference."
But it does. And so will the manner in which we leave. Wish I'd had the time to discuss some of these questions more with Juan while he was here.
Jim Lobe, who has brought his expert eye to the art of watching official Washington for many years now, has an excellent entry on his blog titled Key Neo-Cons Giving Up on Iran Attack? He notes that last week's publication of the ground-breaking NIE that concluded that Iran stopped pursuit of its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 has caused two key leaders of the neocon movement to (1) conclude that it is now unlikely that calls for the GWB administration to attack Iran are unlikely to succeed, and (2) recognize, however grudgingly, that talking to Iran may well be the best thing left to do.
The two are Robert ("father of all the Kagans") Kagan and Bill Kristol.
You should read and bookmark all of Lobe's post there-- especially since he has hyperlinks to all the key texts he refers to.
He writes that, apart from R. Kagan and Kristol, other key members of Neocon Central (i.e., the "Project for a New American Century") such as N. Podhoretz, R. Perle, F. Gaffney, and the ever-delusional Danielle Pletka have refused to give any similar nod to reality and have been going around virtually accusing the NIE's authors of "deliberate deception." (I heard Pletka doing this on a BBC News program just a couple of evenings ago. I can't imagine why they would think it worthwhile to give her crazy views any air-time?)
Lobe notes that this division of R. Kagan and Kristol vs. the rest is the same as the way these same people divided when Sharon broke with Netanyahu back in 2004 over the unilateral disengagement from Gaza and the creation of Kadima. (Israel's rightwing politics is a key touchstone for all of them, you should understand.)
Lobe writes that R. Kagan's position has been echoed in recent days by two other notable neocon acolytes: Mort Kondracke and the British neo-imperial writer Niall Ferguson.
So there are two more great services that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did for humanity when they published last week's report. Not only did they reduce the probability of a Bush administration military attack on Iran by a considerable degree, but they also (1) added considerable new ballast to the weight of those calling for "grand bargain"-type talks with Iran, and (2) they caused apparent chaos and confusion in the neocons' ranks.
Thank you, thank you, the professionals of ODNI.
When I was writing the chapter on climate change in my upcoming book Re-engage! America and the World after Bush I found many really excellent on-line resources on the issue. Some of the best-thought-out policy papers on the issue came from Oxfam. (See a list of these papers here.) One of the main points they make is that the rich northern nations must not only help the much poorer nations of the low-income world to undertake measures to adapt to the consequences of climate change-- rising sea-levels, desertification, increased frequency of storms, etc-- but they (we) must also take equally or more urgent steps to stop inflicting harm on them in this realm.
Many young (and not so young) people from the US and Europe become very idealistic and become fired up with the idea that they can go off to low-income countries and do something very worthwhile to "help" the people of those countries. It's a laudable motivation. However, in terms of net amount of good done for humanity, I think such people might do a lot better to stay back at home in our own well-off countries and work to change those of our own countries' policies that continue on a daily basis to inflict harm on the very vulnerable people in those other countries.
Human-induced climate change is one clear arena for such action. What the whole world most needs from Americans (and Europeans and residents of other high-income countries) right now is mainly that we should all emit far less CO2. Once we ourselves have done that, we can go around "helping" other countries to both reduce their emissions and adapt to the effects of the human-induced global warming that we know is anyway-- even with the best emissions-control policies we can imagine-- going to continue to occur for many years...
But first, surely, we should take responsibility for our own past and continuing actions and try to stop inflicting harm.
The US is by far the emittingest country in the world, on a per-capita basis: 20 metric tons of CO2 emitted per-head in 2004 in the US, as opposed to 3.6 metric tons in China, 11.7 in Japan, 9.4 in the EU...
Trade and economic policy is another area in which we fortunate residents of the rich world can do far more good all round if we work first to stop our own governments and societies from doing things they've been doing for some time, that have been inflicting great harm on vulnerable others elsewhere, than if we simply set out to start "helping" those others. Oxfam (again) has done some great research on the terrible effects that barriers to free trade such as tariffs and huge subsidies to domestic producers of agricultural goods, such as have been steadfastly maintained by the US, the EU, and Japan for many decades now, have had on farming communities throughout the low-income world. Some people come in with proposals to "help" the low-income countries by increasing the international aid contributions made by rich countries. Those are good and necessary suggestions. But they will have little to zero effect so long as the rich countries still hand out massive subsidies to their (our) own huge agribusiness conglomerates.
The concept of "do no harm" is an old one in the medical profession. But there are so many fields of international relations in which it should also be applied! Military/security policy is certainly another one.
Following a policy of "do no harm" is at one level rather easy. It is a fundamentally rather conservative policy, suggesting as it does that when we are in doubt about the effects of any given action we should avoid doing it until we have more information. It urges us not to do things, rather than urging us to get out and "do things". (This is known as the precautionary principle.)
At another level, though, it is a rather demanding approach. It requires that we take some rather deep responsibility for the effects our actions and policy choices have on distant others, which in turn requires that we make energetic and good-faith efforts to find out what those effects are. And this applies, moreover, in areas such as farm subsidies or the development of our own national economies in which at one point we may not even have been aware that our policy choices had any effect on people outside our own borders. But now we know that those two do. Farm subsidies in the US, the EU, and Japan hurt millions of poor farmers around the world. (I want to give a big shout-out to Jimmy Carter for this fine article on the topic that he published in Monday's WaPo.) And unbridled economic "development" in these same rich countries has been puffing out absolutely unconscionable amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere...
What other habits and policies might we be pursuing that, without our being aware of it, are inflicting harm on others elsewhere? Clearly, we need to pay attention.
Another aspect of the "do no harm" approach is that we need to recognize that the people of other countries are in every way just as human and as deserving of our respect and consideration as the people of our own countries. Even-- or rather, especially-- if they are people who are far, far more economically vulnerable and more politically marginalized than ourselves.
This is actually an important foundation at the very core of the Hippocratic oath approach. Doctors, after all, have often been thought of as especially powerful and smart members of the human race and they have often-- in Nazi Germany, here in the US, and in many other places as well-- become tempted into the mindset that they can or even should use their powers on more vulnerable other members of society at their own discretion and for their own reasons, without paying anything like due heed to the rights of those others.
So the Hippocratic oath ("do no harm") approach reminds people with power (and with potentially dangerous skills) in any given society that their skills must be used in a way that:
(2) embodies a commitment to take pro-active steps to learn about the effects their actions and decisions have on those others;
(3) errs on the side of caution-- not doing things, rather than doing them-- if there is any suggestion or possibility that these effects might be harmful to others; and
(4) embodies a commitment to stopping actions that on examination turn out to be inflicting harm on others.
I'm a few days late, but November 30 was the 40th anniversary of the final withdrawal of British forces and power from Aden, now part of a unified Yemeni Arab Republic. That withdrawal was the key step in the dismantling of Britain's permanent military (naval) presence "East of Suez", a development whose inevitability became a lot clearer to Brits and others after the strategic failure of the British-French (-Israeli) "over-reach" assault against Egypt 11 years earlier.
The BBC website has an interesting account by veteran reporter Brian Barron of a repeat visit he recently made to Aden, and his reflections on the 1967 withdrawal which he had covered as a much younger journo.
He tells us a revealing anecdote about standing in Aden's Crater District in 1967 with the notoriously bloody British "counter-insurgency" specialist Col. Colin ("Mad Mitch") Mitchell, watching as some of the soldiers under Mitchell's command were...
Americans, I have found, are a people with not much appreciation for anyone's history-- but especially not for the history of peoples far distant from and perceived as different from themselves. Thus, you have the scenario repeated over and over and over again of eager, fresh-eyed and well-meaning US citizens rushing overseas to work on often well-intentioned projects to bring "modernization", or "good governance", or "universal [= western] judicial norms" or whatever to those distant peoples. They seem to imagine that those other societies are a tabula rasa on which American/"western" norms and practices can simply be inscribed. There is little or no appreciation that people in Africa or Asia or the Middle East have seen nearly all of this before. They have seen white westerners come in, protected by the force of heavy arms or other appurtenances of hard power, and proclaiming all kinds of "humanitarian" but often extremely myopic and self-referential projects. They have seen all those phalanxes of young white idealists come in and try to impose their own societies' norms and projects on indigenous people many years more experienced and wiser than themselves. They have seen the horrendous damage those interventions ended up causing.
Barron's latest reflection on the British retreat from Aden makes a few unnecessarily chauvinistic points. For example, he refers to "the old Anglican Church [which] is no longer the secret police interrogation centre it became following the British retreat", but no reference at all to the interrogation centers where Mitchell and his predecessors over the preceding 130 years of British occupation of Aden did all their ghastly work.
Barron concludes with this reflection:
There was an absence of reliable intelligence (doesn't that sound familiar?). As the insurgency turned deadlier, we withdrew - abandoning moderate allies.
Twenty-three years of police state thuggery followed, with the Soviet KGB replacing the British.
Even after Aden and the rest of the south merged with North Yemen, there was another civil war in the 1990s. No wonder Aden today seems battered and bruised, and its people frustrated by the follies of their rulers: a forgotten place anchored to a forgotten time.
Well, maybe Aden has been (fairly conveniently) "forgotten" by many Brits. But how on earth can anyone say it has been "forgotten" by the 800,000 people who live there, or the 21.5 million people in the rest of Yemen? Do they not count as people whose forgetting or remembering we should take into account?
Indeed, the history of Aden is an important one in the anti-colonial narratives of the Middle East and far beyond. The peoples of the Middle East have never forgotten those narratives. Very few Americans, however, have any idea that they even exist.
Al-Hayat had an interesting report (in Arabic there) today saying that leadership sources in Hamas confirm that they have reached a "memorandum of understanding" with Fateh in preparation for the imminent resumption of dialogue between the two movements.
Does this look like some major steps back toward the Mecca Agreement for peaceful power-sharing between the two Palestinian movements that was achieved with Saudi mediation (and financial backing) back in February? Not surprising if it does, since Hamas's website reports today that Hamas's Damascus-based overall leader Khaled Mishaal has now traveled to the Saudi capital "to discuss means of restoring Palestinian national dialogue."
To me, this indicates that the Saudis are most likely pretty disappointed with the Annapolis meeting of November 27 and the notable lack of any serious US engagement with the peacemaking at and since that meeting
When Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal attended Annapolis, from his country's perspective it was making a huge up-front concession to the Israelis by agreeing to be there in the negotiating room with them before Israel has even done anything to announce a clear commitment to undertake significant withdrawals from the Arab territories it has occupied since 1967. The Saudis also went out on a limb, and probably paid quite a lot of hard cash, to help "persuade" the Syrians and other Arab governments to participate in Annapolis. (Though they were noticeably unable to persuade the Iraqis or Kuwaitis, both of which governments no doubt felt that Iran's close proximity and power and strongly expressed opposition to Annapolis outweighed any Saudi urgings that they should attend.)
The Bush administration responded to the goodwill Riyadh had shown in the run-up to Annapolis by (a) showing blatant disrespect to the Syrians at Annapolis, and (b) doing nothing visible at all to push the peace process any further forward after the confab. Indeed, Pres. Bush has said nothing further in public about Israeli-Arab peacemaking since about noon on Nov. 28. As though his job has now been done?
For its part, Israel responded to Annapolis by announcing its decision to build 300 additional settler-only housing units in the occupied Arab land of Jebel Abu Ghneim, which it renamed Har Homa. Condi Rice responded to questions about that announcement that by bleating sheepishly that she had "sought further clarifications from the Israelis" regarding their plans.
Where is the vision? Where is the commitment? Where is the leadership that is so sorely needed if the peacemaking that was launched at Annapolis is ever to succeed?
Not visible in Washington.
So the Saudis seem to have returned to their original Plan A, and to be retracing the steps they took back in January to craft a new-- hopefully more sustainable-- Fateh-Hamas agreement.
Some in Washington may be very angry with this attempt. For my part, I think having a unified Palestinian body politic is the only way there is to then move forward to achieving a sustainable Palestinian-Israeli agreement. A politically very weak Abu Mazen (1) will not be strong enough in the negotiations with Israel to withstand or do anything to counter the overbearing demands that the Israelis continue to place on him (with a lot of help from Washington and lapdog-in-chief Tony Blair), and (2) will not be strong enough within the Palestinian community to be able to make any agreement he should happen to reach with Israel "stick."
A unified Palestinian movement could strengthen its position considerably through the sustained pursuit of massive non-violent civil action in defense of Palestinian rights. That takes vision, discipline, and above all national unity. If Fateh and Hamas can reach a strong agreement on how to proceed, between them they could mobilize tremendous amounts of support from governments and peoples around the world as a way to counter Israel's reliance on (a) military and administrative domination, and (b) its tight links with some power centers in Washington. And between them, if they remain united, Hamas and Fateh could make any agreement they reach with Israel stick, and stick well.
Readers may want to go back and read this JWN post from late June (shortly after the Fateh-Hamas rift over Gaza), titled "Ten reasons to talk to Hamas," and this article I had in The Nation in early November on the need to engage politically with both Hamas and Hizbullah.
Former Israeli spy chief Efraim Halevy and former US Secretary of State Colin Powell are just two of the prominent figures internationally who now argue that Hamas should be engaged with politically and not only through the barrel of a gun.
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Update Monday morning:
Haaretz is reporting that "Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh's adviser Ahmed Yousuf told Haaretz that he sent a rare letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declaring that Hamas was interested in opening dialogue with the U.S. and the European Union." On another page, Haaretz carries what it describes as the text of Yousuf's "Open Letter", though the provenance of this text is not clear and it is not on Hamas's own main English-language website or, from a quick glance, their Arabic site.
Brig. Gen. Qais al-Ma'muri, chief of the Iraqi Police in Babil (Babylon) province south of Baghdad was killed along with two of his bodyguards by a roadside bomb today, the NYT reported.
Iraq-affairs expert Reidar Visser writes in a communication that he says I can share most of with you*, that
Already, some newswire reports speak of “suspicion towards al-Qaida”. In the absence of further evidence, such accusations should be treated with caution. In several cases of violence in the Shiite-dominated parts of Iraq - including Basra before the imposition of a state of emergency in May 2006, and Najaf during the battle with the “Soldiers of Heaven” in January 2007 - vague references to al-Qaida were used by Iraqi government sources to gloss over episodes that clearly featured elements of intra-Shiite conflict.
So with vicious violence continuing in many parts of Iraq outside of Baghdad, might we suppose that Petraeus's famous "surge" had the effect of displacing some portion of the violence from the Central Baghdad areas that he has now largely "quadrillaged off" with Israeli Wall-type concrete barriers into the rest of the country?
Kirkuk, meanwhile, is also shaping up to be a huge, and hugely contested issue...
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* Reidar is trying to build up the (no-cost) subscription list for the Historiae.org website on which he posts these communications. So if you want to see the whole text of his analysis, and others like it in the future, you'll need to go there and subscribe.
A lot has been going on in Moqtada Sadr's movement in Iraq recently. The WaPo's Ann Scott Tyson is reporting from Baghdad in today's paper that Gen. Petraeus,
Stratfor also reported that Obeidi,
This AP report meanwhile tells us that, back in Najaf today, Obeidi criticized the Sadrists' Shiite rival, IISC head Abdel-Aziz Hakim, for his current visit to the US, calling it an "act of surrender."
It is hard to gauge and assess these developments from a distance-- except to note that the Sadrists seem to be treading a fine line between cooperating, de-facto and in some delimited spheres, with the Americans and not cooperating with them in others. It is also, certainly, significant that Obeidi-- whom we have no reason to doubt at this point is accurately representing Moqtada's views-- is trying to position the group as a firmly Arab Iraqi movement, in contrast to the Hakim/IISC (formerly known as SCIRI) crowd who have historically had much closer ties to Iran.
We should recall that, in the parliamentary election of December 2005, all of Iraq's Shiite parties collaborated, running on a joint list called the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). Within the UIA, the Sadrists were probably the largest single bloc. But SCIRI (now the IISC) had by far the best links with the US occupation authorities and-- perhaps equally importantly-- with MSM journos in the US, who routinely came to describe SCIRI head Abdel-Aziz Hakim as "the leader of the UIA", "the leader of the Iraqi Shiites", etc etc.
(The occupation authorities maintained their close relationship with Hakim despite his longterm-- and continuing-- links with Tehran. Go figure.)
So in the jockeying for positions in the Iraqi "government" that followed thoseelections, the US and its allies did all they could t
