Keyed to Ameica's 4th of July celebration, I have the pleasure of publishing an essay with R.K. Ramazani that is appearing in multiple outlets via Agence Global. One version can be found here. Between us, we've condensed about eighty years of studies of the American and Iranian revolutionary experiences into a few short paragraphs.

Our core observation for today boil down to:

1. Americans and Iranians have much more in common with each other than either side realizes.

2. Both nations have "revolutionary" traditions that first and foremost were about achieving independence. I wrote in greater detail about the American side two years ago here at justworldnews.

3. Even as both countries over time believed that their revolutions stood for distinct values that they've offered to the world, both America and Iran have painful track records of not fully living up to their own norms. Professor Ramazani recently wrote about Iran's freedom deficit here.

4. International legitimacy... matters. Both societies care deeply about their reputation in the world, even as leaders in both countries have conducted themselves in manners than have hurt their nation's prestige before the world. The world indeed is watching.

5. Howard Baskerville was right; Americans and Iranians do share many ideals, of independence, constitutionalism, justice, faith, and yes, liberty. (See my backgrounder on the 100th anniversary of his "martydom" in Tabriz)

6. Iran's present crisis is home grown; lasting solutions to the present crisis must come from within. Yet it's one Americans can recognize and empathize with from the outside.

Consider reading the actual whole text and give us your feedback. This is just the first hints of larger works being hatched.

My grand-daughter Matilda is now eight months old, and totally adorable.

I had forgotten how much WORK baby-care can be. Yup, this reminds me (once again) just how darn wrong Thomas Hobbes was when he defined the "human condition" by saying that "men grow like mushrooms out of the ground."

Baloney! Who looked after Thomas Hobbes when he was a baby? Who tended him, fed him, hugged him, supervised him, taught him the language in which later he would communicate and indeed make his nice easy living... Who?

Another human person, that's who. Most likely, a female person. Most likely, his mother... And as was the case with just about all the other philosophers of the western "Enlightenment", he completely ignored the real work that is involved in child-rearing-- along with the rights of the (overwhelmingly female) people who still do it to this day.

No way you can discuss the "human condition" unless you take into account-- and give due honor to-- the work people do in rearing the young and tending the old, sick, and infirm. Then, once you've done that, there's no way you could think that the condition of being "human" is one of being self-sufficient and meeting all other humans on an essentially equal playing field... No way you could be a market fundamentalist, either...

Anyway, I know you all want to know how Matilda's doing. She's amazingly fearless and determined to physically explore the world around her, using her four limbs, her mouth, and on occasion the full weight of her head.

Her legs are sturdy after kicking a whole lot both after and before her birth. So now, she's pulling herself up onto her feet in the crib and doing some little wobbly steps of proto-walking (while hanging onto the crib bars with at least one hand.)

She's crawling quite well, though still tentatively.

She's amazingly sociable and good-natured, and favors everyone with a big smile.

Right now, her fourth tooth is just coming in-- It's the right front tooth on the top. Her two middle bottom teeth are well in, so her open-mouth smile is particularly adorable.

With the new teeth coming down from her top jaw, she's evidently fascinated by what's happening inside her mouth. So often, now, when she smiles, she does so in a coy, closed-mouth way that allows her to carry on enjoying the movements of her tongue around the inside of her mouth.

I've been trying to stretch her hand-using capabilities. The one hand action she's easily able to imitate is 'drumming' the hand on some nicely reverberating surface. When I open and close my fingers in a kind of stylized "bye-bye" hand-wave, she doesn't yet imitate me by raising her hand in the air, but you can see her starting to work (in this case, a little more than twitch) her fingers.

When I sing her the French children's song "Ainsi font, font, font, les petites marionettes... " with the twirling-hand hand-gestures that go with it, she is always, without exception, fascinated by my turning hands. (Okay, most likely not by my singing voice.) But while she watches my hands closely, she doesn't (yet) seem to be making any attempt to imitate the gestures.

I am fascinated by the whole theory of mirror neurons and the role they may or may not play in mimetic learning.

But mainly, I'm just really amazed by this whole process of grand-parenting. Thoughts of human continuity, appreciation for my foreparents, and concerns for the world that this little girl is going to be becoming an adult in all come crowding into my head.

I had a small number of these "universalist"-type thoughts back when I was the mother of small kids. But that situation was one marked by so much sleep deprivation, uncertainty, anxiety, and just plain stress that I really did not have time to dwell on those thoughts much, or articulate them in any focused way.

Grand-parenting: I can't recommend the experience highly enough. (And if you don't have grand-babies of your own to play with, remember there are always plenty of babies in tough home and community situations who need your loving attention in places other than a family member's home.)

I wish you all the very best as you continue working to reconstruct lives, communities, and a nation that have been harmed very severely indeed by the actions and decisions of my government and its military (as well as by others.)

I am so sorry that we in the peace movement were unable to prevent the disastrous (and lie-based) decision our government took to invade your country in 2003. We tried, but we were not strong enough.

I hope that the rest of the US withdrawal, as mandated in the Withdrawal Agreement, goes ahead smoothly.

The PDF of the Agreement's text can now be found here.) It stipulates, Article 24 (1) that:

All United States forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.

But our government is now, even if with painful slowness, doing the right thing in withdrawing the troops and ending their occupation of your country. We shall try to make sure the rest of the withdrawal occurs according to, or in advance of, the agreed timetable.

Foreign military occupation is always, in itself, a major infringement of the rights of the residents of the area occupied. How could it be otherwise when military rule is established over an entire civilian population-- and this military is, furthermore, in no way directly accountable to or connected by ties of common nationality to the residents of the occupied area?

As we Americans withdraw our military occupation regime from Iraq, we must equally work to ensure that Israel, a state to which we have given-- and continue to give-- an extraordinary level of all kinds of support, likewise speedily ends the military occupation regime that it has maintained for 42 years over the residents of the non-Israeli territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan; and that it withdraws its troops from those areas back inside its own borders.

The US has committed many bad--indeed, under international law, illegal-- acts during its six years of occupation so far in Iraq. These included the mass detentions and the major abuses in the detention facilities; the complete (and quite illegal) transformation of the political and economic order in the country; use of excessive force in numerous military engagements; and so on.

However, one violation of international law it did not commit was to seek to implant its own citizens as settlers inside Iraq.

During Israel's 42-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza it has committed all or nearly all of the same abuses the US committed in Iraq. (Including, after the free and fair Palestinian election of January 2006, it decided to work to overthrow the results of that election; and outrageously, it received full backing from Washington in that endeavor.) But in addition to all those violations of international law, successive Israeli governments since 1967 have also worked systematically to implant large numbers of their own citizens into the occupied areas.

This has constituted a major and ongoing infraction of the natural rights of the Palestinians and the Golani Syrians to the free use of their own land's resources. It has also made the act of withdrawing from the occupied areas, as international law stipulates must happen, that much harder for any Israeli government to contemplate. But that is the fault of all those Israeli citizens who for 42 years now have participated in, profited from, supported, or condoned the settlers' project. Now, Israelis need to take the settlers back into their own country.

When I was growing up in England in the 1950s and 1960s our country was also facing the demographic consequences of seeing an empire retract. English settlers had gone to many countries under British rule, in good faith and with the full backing of the British government. Many had lived in those other countries for some generations. Now, they had to face the choice of either living under the newly independent national governments of those countries, or of returning "home" to an England that many of them had never even seen before.

For the Israeli settlers, returning "home" to Israel will be, by comparison, an easy matter. They all know Israel well. They will not have to move far. Those who want to stay in their current settlement homes may be offered the chance to do so-- but they would have to live peaceably as foreigners under the government of an independent Palestine and would have no special privileges at all over their Palestinian neighbors. It is also possible that the PLO/PA may negotiate a land swap arrangement that would transfer some portion of the settlement areas to Israeli rule; but many of the current settlers would not be covered by it.

Anyway, that is the Palestinian issue-- though we Americans can understand what occupation rule means a lot better now that we have had six disturbing years of our own foreign-occupation rule in Iraq to look back on. So let's wish the Palestinians and Israelis well in their pursuit of a fair and durable agreement that mandates not only peace but also the end of foreign military occupation and the complete withdrawal of the troops that have maintained it.

Today, though, is primarily a day for congratulating Iraqis (and Americans) on their progress towards this goal.

And as everyone including Israel's own settlers realizes, winning that peace will involve a significant evacuation of the settlements that Israel has invested so heavily in putting into the occupied West Bank for the past 42 years.

Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak is being dispatched to Washington today to try to win some flexibility for Israel's large settlement-building interests. Haaretz daily also reported today that Barak's defense ministry has approved the immediate building of 50 new homes in the settlement of Adam-- part of a plan that will eventually put 1,450 new homes there.

Around 500,000 Jewish Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem). Any move by an occupying power to settle its own citizens in occupied areas has since 1949 been deemed quite illegal under international law.

In today's NYT, Ethan Bronner reported on an interview he got with Barak on the eve of the latter's departure to Washington, that:

Mr. Barak himself declined to address the question of a temporary freeze, ... saying only that settlements should be viewed as one issue in a larger framework needed to create a Middle East peace.

“For us, it is very important that the Palestinians commit to seeking an end to the conflict and a finality of any claims,” he said. “We should not isolate this issue of settlements and make it the most important one. It has to be discussed in the context of a larger peace discussion.”

He added, “Many Israelis fear that what Palestinians want is not two states but two stages,” meaning an end to Israel in phases. He also said that by focusing solely on settlement building and not on what the Arab countries should also be doing for peace, Israel felt that it was being driven to its knees and delivered to the other side rather than asked to join a shared effort.

But Barak is wrong to imply that getting an immediate freeze on settlement building is somehow unrelated to the quest for a final peace between the two sides. At its root, after all, the big issue between Israelis and Palestinians is a dispute over real estate: who gets what.

International law stipulates that being an occupying power-- as Israel is in the West Bank and in Syria's Golan, or as the US has been for the past six years in Iraq-- confers no rights at all to sovereignty over the territory occupied.

(Just this week, the US is taking the first big step toward the complete withdrawal from Iraq that was negotiated with the Iraqi government last November. And the US has never sought to exploit its position as occupying power by moving groups of permanent American "settlers" into Iraq.)

But throughout the 42 years Israel has been the occupying power in the West Bank, it has put those 500,000 Jewish-Israeli settlers in there. And the fact of their presence inside the West Bank already makes a complete Israeli withdrawal from the area thousands of times harder to contemplate than it would have been without them there-- just as Ariel Sharon and other highly placed settlement boosters all along intended.

But the idea that the Israeli government would continue boosting the settlers' numbers (and their consumption of scarce West bank resources like land and water) while the permanent-status negotiations continue defies belief, and should be seen as a major indicator of lack of Israeli good faith in the negotiation.

It is as if, during a property dispute I'd have with my neighbor here in Virginia, in which all the law indicates my ownership of the property in question, she blithely continued to build a new condo complex on the property. In agreeing to take on my suit against my neighbor, one of the first things a judge would do would be to issue a "cease and desist" order against her building operations.

In the Israeli-Palestinian dispute it is effectively the US that has for many years now taken on the role of "judge" in the dispute. "Cease and desist" is the very least this judge should require as a token of Israel's good faith and good intent in the final-status negotiations that must surely soon get underway. (Otherwise, where is the territorial basis for the independent Palestinian state? Where are the provisions of international law that must undergird any agreement among the world's nations if it is to have any durability or legitimacy?)

There is a good question, however, as to how much political capital President Obama should actually expend on trying to win Israel's compliance with the "cease and desist" order. And here I think that so far he has played the diplomatic/political game quite effectively.

He and his officials have all remained quite firm on verbally requesting a complete settlement freeze, and on justifying that request in the public arena; but they have as yet undertaken no actual policy actions to hold Israel accountable for following through on that demand. My sense is that they are holding their political "big guns" for a confrontation with Netanyahu's government that may well lie shortly ahead-- over the big issue of the final-status peace.

Meanwhile, by rhetorically holding firm on the settlement-building issue they have been able to educate many key members of the US Congress about the importance of the territorial issues underlying it, and about Netanyahu's lack of good faith in this negotiating arena. They have also quietly but steadily been building the domestic constituency inside the US for forthright action on securing the final peace.

For the Palestinians and the Arab states, an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank is currently seen as an essential precursor to the resumption of any final-status talks with Israel. This is a cautious position that is solidly rooted in the Palestinians' 18-year history of negotiating with Israel.

In the Oslo Accord of 1993, which was only an interim agreement between the PLO and Israel, both sides committed to completing their final-status peace agreement before 1999... But that deadline slipped by. From 1996 through 1999 Israel's prime minister was Benjamin Netanyahu. He almost totally refused to negotiate final-status issues with the Palestinians, agreeing only reluctantly to engage on negotiations on a very few, very small, further "interim" steps. Meanwhile, throughout those post-Oslo years, Israel's settlement-building program went into high gear.

So by 1999 the Palestinians did not have the promised final-status peace agreement; and meanwhile the territorial base on which they could hope to establish their state had been significantly further eroded.

Then in Annapolis in November 2007, no less a figure (!) than Pres. George W. Bush publicly vowed that his final peacemaking would result in securing the text of a final-status peace agreement before the end of his presidency. It didn't happen. Indeed, as his presidency entered its final days Israel was pounding the Palestinians in Gaza extremely harshly and the very shaky peace talks that had been underway with Mahmoud Abbas fell completely apart, having gotten almost nowhere.

Oh, and throughout the period of what was once lauded as "the Annapolis process" Israel's government implanted many additional thousands of settlers into the West Bank. That, in spite of what were supposed to be its commitments under the 2002 Road Map.

Fool me once, shame on you? Fool me twice, shame on me? Fool me three times-- what?

That history certainly fuels much of the stress that the Palestinians-- all Palestinians-- place on the need for a settlement freeze. But they too, all of them, also share Ehud Barak's view that the biggest imperative right now is not (just) a settlement freeze. And it is not (just) the lifting of a few roadblocks here or there in the West Bank; it is not (just) improving the quantity and mix of freight that Israel allows into Gaza, or Israel's release of some proportion of the 11,000 Palestinian "security" detainees it currently holds in its prisons...

After all, any or all of those actions if taken by Israel can very easily be reversed so long as Israel is the still the occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza. Recall how Likud strategic-affairs thinker Efraim Inbar talked about this in the amazingly candid interview he gave me back in March.

What the Palestinians, like Ehud Barak and also (if his rhetoric is to be believed) Benjamin Netanyahu, seek above all is a final-status peace between these two nations.

Yes, of course the two sides will enter into this negotiation with widely differing opening "requirements" and requests. That is natural. But if the US is to help midwife a final peace between them that is sufficiently fair to everyone concerned that it ends up being durable, then this peace must take international law as a starting point that can help it sift through and give due consideration to the claims and desires of both parties.

Pres. Obama has expressed his commitment to winning a final-status Israeli-Palestinian peace since his earliest days in office. Thus far he has not defined a deadline for reaching this goal. (It's probably wise to be a bit cautious on that, given the debacle of Bush's 'Annapolis' deadline.)

But Obama has been lining his ducks up for a peace push in a very smart way.

So now, if Ehud Barak and prime minister Netanyahu are saying they absolutely cannot bear to be pressured on the settlement-building issue, Obama and his team should politely but firmly usher them into the next diplomatic chamber.

That's the one where the US, the 'Quartet', the Palestinians, and the other Arab parties are all sitting down ready to negotiate the final peace.

And probably, that is also the point at which Washington should start implementing firm accountability measures against Israel for any further violations it enacts of the order to "cease and desist" building settlements. Accountability measures, after all, cannot be implemented against only one party to this negotiation.

The choice of that color, and of the accompanying rallying cry of "Allahu-akbar", seemed like deliberate attempts to build alliances between the often pro-secular west-o-philes of North Tehran and important reformist branches of the country's ruling hierarchy. (The lack of any real agreement between these two portions of the movement over whether the goal is to reform the country's Islamic system or to overthrow it is probably one of the movement's most notable weaknesses.)

But the use of the 'green' branding did seem like a bit of a master-move, regardless how things turn out. For me, it evoked first and foremost the great marching song of the old Sinn Fein/IRA struggle for Irish independence: "Oh, we're all off to Dublin in the green, in the green... "

In the Irish context, of course, "Orange" is also an extremely potent marker. Note that when the successfully independent Irish Republicans designed their national flag, it cleverly incorporated the orange along with the green-- in much the same way that the flag of democratic South Africa cleverly incorporates all the main colors and themes of that country's previously warring parties.

Here in the US, I think one of the most moving civil war memorials of all is the court-house at Appomattox, the spot where Robert E. Lee submitted the surrender of the Army of Virginia. Now preserved as a historical site, the courthouse has a thought-provoking wall of photos of the war dead: the ones matted with Confederate grey are checkerboarded somberly across the whole wall with those matted with Yankee blue. There's a lot to be said, I think, for undertaking a good mash-up of everyone's formerly partisan symbols at the end of a civil war.

In Palestinian politics, green is the color used by Hamas, while Fateh uses yellow (on the right here.) Orange is the color used by Moustapha Barghouthi's still-small Mubadara party.

Shift focus to Lebanon, and confusingly there it's Hizbullah, which is broadly allied to Hamas, that uses yellow, while the somewhat-in-competition Amal movement uses green.

The Grand-daddy of the present wave of pro-west "color revolutions" is the "Orange Revolution" of 2004-05 in Ukraine.

Oh, by the way, that last image comes from the website of the Green movement in the European parliament. Numerous countries have Green Parties these days, of course, with their "green" signifying their environmentalist concern. Can't forget them...

Okay, moving along from 2005 we then had the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia. I can't find any satisafactory images from that, such as would quickly clarify for me whether the "rose" actually refers to a color or a flower.

But while we're in that part of the color spectrum we cannot forget the feisty US women of Code Pink.

And then there is Thailand, which earlier this year had back-to-back "red" and "yellow" movements trying to take over the capital. That development prompted the Asia Society's Jamie Metzel to call for the creation of a new movement to bring the two sides together. Okay, what he really called for was an especially Thai form of an "orange" revolution: mashing up the symbols, again.

On a longer time-scale, the most lasting of all color brandings of political movements in modern times has almost certainly been the association of red with socialism and/or communism. That association has held true in almost every country except the US (and perhaps Thailand?)

In the US, for some unknown reason, political analysts started some time ago talking about "red states" and "blue states"-- with red signifying the Republican Party, and blue the Democrats. Maybe this is related to the exceptionalism American culture displays on other matters related to socialist movements, like the US's choice of what seems like a fairly random day in early September to celebrate "Labor Day", when every other country I know of that honors its working people does so on May 1st.

One final note about political branding. I still think one of the most powerful symbols anyone anywhere has ever developed is the peace symbol. It was designed in 1958 by the anti-war British designer Gerald Holtom, who said it was based on the semaphore symbols for "ND"-- nuclear disarmament.

He also wrote this about the development of the design:

"I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it."

In the comments here, it would interesting to learn of other uses of color branding by non-governmental political movements around the world. I am sure I have missed some above!

Of course, the 1,200-word format is ways too short to give due consideration to all the actual and potential ripples from the recent crisis in Iran; and as it happened what I ended up giving shortest shrift to in the piece was the effects Iran's internal crisis will inevitably have on the prospects for ramping down the still very dangerous confrontation between the US and Iran over Iran's nuclear technology program.

So what the article dealt with mainly were the also very important arenas of Iraq, the balance in the Persian Gulf more generally, Arab-Israeli peacemaking, and Afghanistan.

On Gulf balance issues, I just went back and re-read this December 2003 JWN post, 'Geopolitics of the Gulf 201'. It still looks pretty helpful today (along with its precursor, 'Geopolitics of the Gulf 101'.

I had written about the effects of the Iran crisis on the nuclear issue in this June 20 post on JWN. I see that Laura Rozen has a new post on her blog on (mainly) this topic. Hat-tip for that, btw, goes to the interesting new blog being produced by Trita Parsi's National Iranian-American Council.

The bottom line from the 'experts' cited by Rozen on how the Iranian crisis will affect the prospects for Obama getting a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue is really all over the place.

She quotes Parsi himself as saying,

"It's very tough for the president to engage in a serious manner within the next three-to six months because of how the Iranian government has been conducting itself... It's politically far more difficult for him to pull this off," than before the Iranian government crackdown on opposition supporters. "I'm not saying it's impossible."

"Some people are more optimistic, some are less... To me, we can hope to have more leverage, but we could have less. My impression is, we were going to try [engagement]. If it didn't work, we'd move on. We would not be naïve that it would work."

Scary.

Anyway, I'll try to get back to this topic more when I can.

Publisher's note: In one of the discussions here we recently got into a consideration of the Treaty of Westphalia. Dominic Tweedie (aka Domza) proposed that the topic needed a lot more examination. I agreed, and invited him to lead off this discussion. He got back with amazing rapidity with a launch-text for this discussion. Thanks, Dominic!

I am very happy indeed to put this up on JWN. Given the importance of the topic commenters are hereby freed from the 300-word limit; but maybe try to keep them below 1,000 words? Also, I'll try to follow the discussion on the comments board as closely as I can, and to keep it serious and on-topic. ~HC

We have been quarrelling over Iran. We have no sure common idea of the path to follow or of what we have in common at all. What are we? Concerned? Interested? Compelled? On what common ground could we stand? Where, in the past, have such ties bound? Internationalism goes back to Lafayette, Napoleon Bonaparte, Lord Byron, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and most powerfully, to the International Brigade that fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War and to Che Guevara, the extraordinarily successful champion of the wretched of the earth, who was born of a white-settler family in Argentina.

Historical internationalism would also have to include “liberation theology”, and the “pedagogy of the oppressed” as championed by Paulo Freire.

The fully constituted independent nations of the earth are more numerous than ever. At about 200, they have probably doubled in number in living memory, and now for the first time in history they cover almost the entire habitable land-surface of the planet. The available common model for internationalism is therefore the anti-colonialism that has led to this proliferation of free nation-states. The next available common model is the 1939-1945 World War against fascism, in whose shadow we have all lived.

For those who used to be involved in it, it is still a surprise that the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) that was such a poor relation for most of its three decades of life, appears now in retrospect as a mighty exemplar of both these compulsive strains of internationalism: anti-colonialism and anti-fascism. How, then, did the AAM work?

Its aim was to have opposition to apartheid accepted by the entire British people as being an embodiment of their best interests. The AAM did achieve this goal, having started decades earlier with a small appeal around a few shops in North London, for people to voluntarily stop buying South African oranges. It was a direct mass-action movement, and not primarily a movement that called for sanctions or any government action. Sanctions were government’s attempt to recover the initiative after the mass movement had become strong. The AAM wanted voluntary mass boycott, not sanctions. It wanted the direct agency of common people to prevail; but sanctions came along like the lamb’s tail that follows the lamb.

Contemporary with the AAM was another voluntary mass democratic movement of similar size, which still exists because its task is not yet complete. This is the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). But outside Britain, it seems that such large institutionalised democratic “single-issue” campaigns are rare. In South Africa, although we have a serious interest in Zimbabwe and Swaziland, both of them on our borders, solidarity groups are in practice small, unchanging cliques with no hold on a mass membership. In the USA, a peace movement may mushroom but at election time, instead of it rising to the occasion, it melts away to nothing.

So now, almost a generation after the “democratic breakthrough” against apartheid in South Africa, we find at international level that a country, or countries plural, might adopt “sanctions” (punishments) against another country. These could begin with the summoning of ambassadors for a telling-off, and escalate from there. Presently there are sanctions on Zimbabwe.

But sanctions are problematic. Sanctions start to imply a virtual world authority. Sanctions tend towards reversing the independence struggle. Sanctions interfere with national sovereignty. So we must ask, what is this thing called national sovereignty?

We could begin with the nailing of Martin Luther’s 95 theses to a church door in Germany nearly 500 years ago. That was the beginning of the end of the globalism of Rome, which globalism had by that time reached the Pacific Ocean. The Protestant Reformation sparked a series of huge events including wars. These wars had now to be concluded in the absence of an over-arching power in Rome. It took until 1648 to establish the Peace of Westphalia that fixed the idea of national sovereignty, equality between nations of all sizes, and the prohibition of interference in the internal affairs of other nations.

This Westphalian idea of sovereignty is what was fought for in the 20th century, from the 1905 independence of Norway onwards, but especially after the end of the anti-fascist war in 1945. Westphalian independence was for all intents and purposes taken as synonymous with freedom, or “the good that contains all other goods” as International Brigader Christopher Caudwell called it.

The counter-trend, towards creation of world authority in the shape of the United Nations and many other world institutions, is at least ambiguous, if not altogether reactionary. It dilutes and sometimes negates (as recently, for example, in Iraq) the national sovereignty that the Europeans had upheld for three centuries. When national sovereignty began to apply to their former colonies, the ex- and neo-colonial powers sought to modify it.

How might we construct a general grand unified theory of sovereignty and solidarity? What firm material can we assemble for this construction project?

All phenomena owe their development to the struggle of opposites within the unity that is the phenomenon’s system. The phenomenon of the nation-state began to be understood in this kind of way after the publication in 1651, three years after the Peace of Westphalia, of Thomas Hobbes “Leviathan”, including its astonishing “Frontispiece” showing a giant made up of millions of individuals.

So the first firm thing we have is the internally-generated determination of the nature and quality of each nation-state. Westphalia recognised this. Upon the back of this a doctrine is erected of “the right of nations to self-determination”. In this way the pretext for, but also the limits of, the Byronic or Guevaran solidarity initiative from outside can be formulated. Caudwell and Guevara were not afraid to invade and fight, and both died as a consequence, whereas the Anti-Apartheid Movement grew by confining its actions to individual boycott, albeit on a mass scale. There is legitimate international action, but the boundary of its legitimacy is always contested and judged according to circumstances.

The second thing we must reclaim for our building project is the advance from globalism to equality. We must insist that in 1648 the Peace of Westphalia got it right, whereas centralisation of moral and legal power today (in Europe, of course) as the “international community” of public opinion, or as the International Criminal Court, or as trump-card “human rights”, is NOT getting it right, three and a half centuries later. To see this, we must be able to see why a single planetary republic would be different in kind and a worse thing as compared to democratic republics that have formed voluntarily, and meet each other as equals. The easiest example of self-organising equality is the Internet. We know it makes sense. Reversion towards a quasi-papal world authority is a big step backwards. We are all called upon to be adults now. It is no use for us to be arguing about who are parents and who are children.

On JWN we manage, as autonomous individuals, to sustain a visible community in the absence of any external coercive apparatus. This is the way forward.

Other commonplace principles apply. It is not all right to presume guilt. It is not all right to accuse and then to treat the accused as tainted. Our now-President, Jacob Zuma, had to endure such things for many years. We fought them with him and elected him President of our country. South Africans would not like to see a world where allegations are treated as fact, and governments hastily toppled on that basis. We have to presume that they present themselves in public as free agents responsible for themselves, just like individual citizens.

Nothing is said above about “colour-” or bogus foreign-power interventions dressed up as “revolutions”, except insofar as such bogus revolutions are invariably in favour of “the globalism of the rich” or new papacy, which we must explicitly reject (see above). The powers should be even more circumspect than individuals. National sovereignty and non-interference in the affairs of other countries; these are the watchwords.

That's right, Pastor Ken Pagano is urging his flock to bring their weapons to his Assemblies of God church. Talk about "fire and brimstone." Open guns must be unloaded; concealed firearms ... well, they won't be checked.

An AG Professor friend who knows Ken Pagano tells me that Pagano is a reasonable, well-educated conservative chap. (with a Doctorate of Ministry) My friend suspects this event to be more about publicity to attract new members to a small church. Indeed, Pagano has received much media attention, even appearing on Fox News.

Pagano asserts that he wants to celebrate how "God and guns were part of the foundation of this country," that if we didn't have guns, we wouldn't have America. Any proceeds from a "raffle" at his bring-your-guns-to-church-day, he says, will "go to charity." (Would that be the NRA?)

Pagano says he wants to start a dialogue, that he just wants to "promote responsible gun ownership," that he is open to considering other approaches. Then again, who would want to "dialogue" with someone toting a semi-automatic machine gun?

I wonder too about the fears driving this. We've heard about horrible shootings in churches lately. The solution isn't to bring more "pieces" into the church, but more peace. If matters get really bad, then metal detectors and security. The notion of weapons in a modern sanctuary "creeps me out" -- as a person of faith. I wonder too if there's a good bit of ole' time southern revanchism afoot here, as I've heard all too much "chatter" about "the black man who is going to take away our guns."

Pagano apparently revels in the attention and is undaunted by the few criticisms he's heard: “I don’t see any contradiction in this. Not every Christian denomination is pacifist.”

On that point, Pagano does not know his own church's history. Until 1967, the Assemblies of God Church was officially an antiwar, pacifistic, and peace-seeking church; even today, youth from that church are able to claim "conscientious objector" status. (though very few do)

For more on this lesser known history, I recommend a new book by Paul Alexander: PEACE TO WAR: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God. Alexander chronicles how the former peace church (among the fastest growing worldwide) devolved into a war church -- and suggests how it might yet reclaim a middle position, for the sake of its own witness.

Paul Alexander, a Professor at Azuza Pacific University, deserves a wide reading in "charismatic" circles -- his book was even favorably reviewed by Amos Yong of (Pat Robertson's) Regent University.

Alexander runs a new organization called, "Pentecostals and Charismatics for Peace and Justice." (strange as that may sound to those who recall my lament about "the mother of all sermons" here at JWN" ) Alas, I doubt his influence is felt very far - yet. Shunned by the AG and mega-evangelical presses, his book was jointly published by two Mennonite Houses. (kudos to Cascadia & Herald)

As for tonight's gun-fest, cameras are banned, to protect the "privacy" of the gun owners. No doubt. Maybe one of those courageous Iranian protesters with cell cameras can get a peek for us?

As far as I know, the Assemblies of God church hierarchy has remained muzzled about Pagano. The silencer ought to be removed. Or are guns and war the only "fire" left in the soul of the Pentecostal church these days?

Turns out these "commenters" are all one person but operating under different names like "Asfour", "Victor", "Firouz".

This sock-puppetry completely violates the spirit of discussion the rest of us have here. It's also a way whereby the author of these posts can evade the discourse-hogging guideline. He or she has now been banned from the site.

Namely this (from Al-Jazeera):

"We appreciate Obama's new language towards Hamas. And it is the first step in the right direction toward a dialogue without conditions, and we welcome this," he said.

Meshaal said that Obama's words must be followed by action on the ground, mentioning that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to suffer under an Israeli blockade.

Occupation and injustice go on," he said.

... Mashaal also called on Obama to pull out Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton, the US security co-ordinator in the region, who is supervising the training of Palestinian forces in the West Bank.

I guess the other thing that's notable about today's statement is that it was addressed primarily to an Arabic-language audience. So it is significant, and of course good, that he's saying the same things to both English-language and Arabic-language audiences.

Item #1: Marc Lynch, just back from a quick trip to Israel and the West Bank, blogged this last night:

without much publicity Obama's pressure has already started generating some important results on the ground -- not just Netanyahu's carefully hedged uttering of an emasculated two state formula, but the significant easing of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank...

That Israel has quietly made significant changes to the checkpoints in the last few weeks -- after ignoring six years worth of Road Map commitments, snubbing Tony Blair and the Quartet's persistent demands, dismissing the recommendations of the World Bank and other international development agencies, and greatly expanding them even while negotiating during the Annapolis process -- suggests that Obama's tough love approach has actually been the only one able to achieve real results.

According to the survey of 800 registered [U.S.] voters, which was conducted June 9-11 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, those who believe Israel is committed to peace has dropped to 46 percent this month from 66 percent last December. The poll found that some 49 percent of American voters call themselves supporters of Israel, down from 69 percent last September, and only about 44 percent of voters believe the United States should support Israel -- down from 71 percent a year ago.

These are all key pieces of evidence that Obama's strategy is working... Though it has until now been, as I said, a painstakingly slow one.

I completely recognize that the removal of, actually, just a handful of the roadblocks with which the Israeli occupation stifles normal life, including normal economic life, in the West Bank is a thin 'achievement' indeed. (The PDF of the UN-OCHA's latest weekly update on the situation is here.) Also, steps like that or, for example, an increase in the number or types of goods Israel allows into Gaza each week, are incredibly easy to reverse.

We can recall, too, what the cocky Likudnik strategic thinker Efraim Inbar told me about what he expected from Obama when I spoke with him back in March:

"The Americans may push us some, so we’ll remove one or two outposts or one or two roadblocks. We’ll play with the Americans.”

It is that big problem of the occupation that Obama has set himself to tackle. And so far he's taken only baby steps toward doing so.

But here's the important thing: In taking those baby steps and in presenting the Palestinian-Israeli issue in the way he has to the US public and Congress, Obama has actually succeeded in building up, rather than diminishing, the support his approach in the US public and Congress. That is unprecedented for US Presidents trying to move towards a more even-handed Arab-Israeli peace policy.

One of my friends who works this issue intensely reports that Sen. Mitchell has actually spent just as much time "working" key members of Congress on the issues as he has doing fact-finding in the Middle East.

However, I don't think anyone in or out of the administration judges that "just" getting a few more West Bank roadblocks removed, or a few settlement outposts theatrically "demolished" (only to be re-erected someplace else the very next day, as has often happened in the past), or "just" getting the Israeli military's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) to add beans into the "diet" of the Gazans this week, or potatoes next week, or whatever, is going to solve this problem.

Everyone understands this is above all a political/diplomatic problem; and if Obama and Mitchell don't take some significant steps at the level of authoritative diplomatic engagement pretty soon, then the whole, still perilously fragile balance in the Arab-Israeli region could still, oh so easily, explode.

That, at a time when the US military is working overtime to finetune the modalities of a safe exit from Iraq, the situation in Iran remains extremely murky, and NATO's entire situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan is poised on a logistical knife-edge.

So the actions Obama and Co. have taken until now-- expressing a firm stand on Israeli settlement construction (though not, actually, doing anything yet to hold Israel accountable on that score), and expressing a firm stand on opening up the crossings into Gaza (again, without any actions to implement it)-- are in a sense an overture to the main, that is diplomatic, act that should, and I believe will, follow.

They have also served to both test and prepare public opinion in both the US and Israel for the main act. (And the results of that 'testing' would, I think, encourage them to move ahead even more boldly.)

But when will they make the big diplomatic move? Nobody knows. This team has proven incredibly good at holding its cards close to its chest.

It's also good at using a little tactical deception when it wants to. For example, until today, nobody has a clue whether Dennis Ross's latest move-- over to the National Security Council, from the State Department, is a move up, sideways or into some form of bureaucratic sidelining. As Politico's usually very well-informed Ben Smith writes: "As for how much influence he'll have, we'll have to wait and see."

For my part, I believe Ross will now come more effectively than before under the command of General Jim Jones, who runs a tight ship on the NSC. But as Smith says, we'll have to wait and see.

As JWN readers might guess, I had a lot more I wanted to say about this subject. I also wanted to include a little paragraph about Jimmy Carter's great role. But that 800-word limit is deadly.

Maybe later today I'll have a bit of energy left to expand on some of the arguments in the piece, here on JWN. But meantime, go read it; link to it on your blogs; and let's discuss the arguments it makes, here on JWN with our usual courtesy.

This topic needs a lot more exposure and discussion than it's gotten within the US until now.

The always very well informed David Ignatius, writing (also in today's WaPo) about US policy responses to the developments in Iran, says,

As the mullahs' grip on power weakens, there are new opportunities to peel away some of their allies. The United States is moving quickly to normalize relations with Syria, and there's talk of working with the Saudis to draw elements of the radical Palestinian group Hamas away from its Iranian patrons, toward a coalition government that would be prepared to negotiate with Israel. Observes a White House official: "Iran's allies in the region have to be wondering, 'Why should we hitch our wagon to their starship?' "

Ignatius links the administration's current overture toward Syria, and its consideration of an overture toward Hamas, centrally to its desire to take maximum advantage of the current political problems in Tehran. I would note, however, that these moves have been under active consideration in the administration since considerably before the hotly disputed June 12 election in Iran.

From that perspective, announcing the moves in the context of linking them to the situation in Iran might be very canny politics within the US. But it is not the whole story.

Indeed, when I was in Damascus earlier this month, there were already many signs of a growing thaw in the long frozen US-Syria political relationship.

It has also been an open secret for some time now that Obama, Mitchell, and Clinton are very eager that the Palestinian movements-- especially the 'Big Two', Fateh and Hamas-- find a way to settle their differences enough to allow a unified Palestinian delegation to take part in negotiations for a final peace with Israel. Mitchell said as much in his first conference call with Jewish-American leaders back in early February. And his determination-- along with, presumably, that of the person who appointed him, Pres. Obama-- that this happen seems only to have grown since then.

Including that Mitchell gave an attentive hearing to former Pres. Jimmy Carter when Carter went to brief him June 18 about the discussions he had had over the preceding week with Hamas leaders in Damascus, the West Bank, and Gaza.

In my recent blog post on Fateh's woes, I made one suggestion as to how a Palestinian negotiating team that enjoys the confidence of both the big parties might be constituted. Such a team might or might not include Fateh's Mahmoud Abbas.

When I interviewed Hamas head Khaled Meshaal in Damascus June 4, he restated Hamas's longstanding position that it is happy to have Abbas do the negotiating with Israel-- but on the condition that any final deal negotiated should be submitted to a Palestinian-wide referendum thereafter. Hamas, he said, would abide by the results of that referendum.

Personally, I think it would be better to find a way to get Hamas more involved in the negotiating-- even if only indirectly-- from a far earlier stage than that. Hence my suggestion that a person or persons whom they trust be fully included on the negotiating team from the beginning.

Either way, folding Hamas into the diplomatic strategy is something that has to be done, given their real weight in Palestinian society. And it's something the Mitchell team has been wrestling with from the get-go. Let's hope the current turmoil in Iran gives Mitchell and Obama a new opportunity to "sell" this idea to the many folks in Congress and the US public who are still very wary of the "the H word."

We can note, though, that there is significant support in Israel for talking with Hamas directly. The last time Tel Aviv University's Tami Steinmetz Center recorded the answer to this question, in its February 2009 poll, it found that 45% of Israelis supported this. In other, earlier polls, pollsters found that an even stronger percentage of Israelis supported negotiating with a Palestinian team that included both Fateh and Hamas.

Regarding the new US opening to Syria, we should remember that it was Pres. Bush who decided to withdraw the US ambassador from Syria; and he did so, in February 2005, in response to the specific situation in Lebanon. Former PM Rafiq Hariri had just been assassinated there, and much of the evidence about that seemed to point towards Syria.

A lot has happened-- in Lebanon, in Syria, and in the US-- since then.

Back in February 2005 Syria still had some 35,000 troops in Lebanon, the remnant of a peacekeeping force that went into the country in 1976 with Washington's blessing. After the Hariri killing, a broad movement of Lebanese arose that called for the withdrawal of those troops; and that withdrawal was duly completed in April 2005. After subsequent developments inside Lebanon, that included a nasty assault from Israel, elections, further discussions, and a new government, Lebanon and Syria agreed for the first time ever to have normal diplomatic relations with each other and exchange ambassadors.

That step took place earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the "evidence" that the Bushites and others had relied on to pin blame for the Hariri killing on Syria seemed to largely unravel. Earlier this year, four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals who had been imprisoned in Lebanon since 2005 were released by order of the UN's Special Tribunal for Lebanon. So there really has been little continuing rationale for Washington not to have an ambassador in Damascus. And meanwhile, Syria is a regional player of considerable significance in both the Iraqi and the Arab-Israeli theaters.

In recognition of that, Sec. of State Clinton called Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem May 31, and they agreed on a 'Road Map' for improving relations. Ten days later peace envoy Mitchell made his first visit to Damascus.

You can find my June 12 account of the recent history of the US-Syrian relationship here. My thoughts on the need to include Syria in the Arab-Israeli negotiations are here. My compilation of the 18-year record of Syria's attempts to negotiate its own final peace with Israel is here. And my June 4 interview with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem is here.

It is intriguing, though, to see that we finally have a president who recognizes the importance of diplomacy and has the capacity and agility to start to rebuild a whole host of important relations that had, basically, been shredded by the Bushites.

Anyway, Milani talked at length, un-self-consciously and quite admiringly, about the events in Iran being a 'color revolution.' (So I wish his own choice of tie-color had been a bit more clearcut.)

I guess the main news, though, was Nick Burns-- who resigned in April 2008 from being Condi Rice's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs-- offering his fulsome praise for Obama's slowly evolving stance on Iran.

He said,

He's been measured, serious, thoughtful. He has a longterm viewpoint.

... He was quite right to underline, as he did in his speech today, that 'What's going on in Iran today is not about us; it's about the Iranians.'

My understanding is that the main reason Burns retired from the Foreign Service at a relatively young age was because, in his role handling the Bush administration's relations with Iran, he'd felt very constrained by the president's insistence on confining those contacts strictly to a limited number of interactions with the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad.

Anyway, it was interesting to hear the intensity of the praise he sent Obama's way. He also argued that the events of the past ten days have sent a shock to all those in the US who used to argue that the US would have to confront Iran militarily "because it is such a formidable monolith... But now, we're seeing that it's not."

Burns was also, significantly, the only one of the three panelists to point out that Mahmoud Ahmedinejad undoubtedly has some popular real support inside Iran-- though he, like the others thought the election results had clearly been falsified.

Sadjadpour, who runs the Iran-study programs at the Carnegie Endowment, and Milani, who works at the right-wing Hoover Institution at Stanford University, were both unabashed supporters of the pro-Musavi movement, though Milani was more ideologically so than Sadjadpour. Sadjadpour seemed generally much more up-to-date with breaking events than Milani.

Sadjadpour said he had heard from Rafsanjani allies in Dubai that Rafsanjani had been trying to assemble a quorum of the Assembly of Experts, which is the only body that can rein in-- or depose-- the Supreme Leader (Khamenei). "There are around eighty of them. They are very old indeed-- avergae age, 'deceased'," he said, "But thus far these efforts haven't succeeded, because many of the 'experts' are actually dependent on Khamenei in one way or another."

He also predicted that, with the diminution in the size of the pro-Musavi demonstrations,

Now, the opposition will move to trying to paralyze the Iranian economy-- the oil sector, the bazaars, the bus system, and so on.

This is another lesson they took from their own revolution in 1978-79, when they saw how the Shah's use of excessive repression had merely fueled the revolution. This regime has the science of repression down to a science.

three years ago, Khamenei ordered his social scientists to study all the color revolutions of recent years, figuring out what their early warning signs are, and how to deflect or counter them. But he forgot the close links these color revolutions have with the people, and how creative the people can be in organizing them.

Burns advocated a measured approach to the issue of when Washington should move to re-engage with a post-election Tehran. He spoke quite clearly in favor of the US having a broad and serious negotiation with Iran. But he also said,

We've got to be careful not to give too much, too soon. It would be a mistake for us to rush to negotiations on nuclear weapons or anything else.

Once we've concluded there has been a resolution of the dispute in Tehran we'll need to make a decision on that. That may be one month from now, or one year.

But the Iranian government that emerges, whatever kind it is, will be weaker than what we've gotten accustomed to-- for a number of reasons, but including the new problems they've been experiencing in Iraq.

I don't want us to rush to give Ahmedinejad any legitimacy until we are absolutely sure that the reformers can't succeed.

In Burns's reply he added that Russia and China have also now congratuated Ahmedinejad. He said he strongly hoped that some other democracies and regional powers would join the US in withholding their endorsement of the Ahmedinejad victory. "It can't be that Obama, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel are the only heads of government who withhold their endorsement."

Sadjadpour said he was "very disappointed" with the Turkish government's position.

(Actually, this whole question of "recognition" of other governments, as constituting a non-trivial part of the de-facto legitimacy of any government, is something I have long been fascinated by. In democratic theory, of course, political legitimacy is supposed to derive from "the consent of the governed." But who makes the determination of how to read that consent? Election officials, I suppose. But what if the election process itself is corrupt?)

My bottom line from the discussion: These individuals-- including Ignatius-- seemed generally to agree that there would be no quick resolution to the current crisis and that the Iranian regime would emerge noticeably weakened by it. Burns was the panelist who spoke out most strongly in favor of diplomatic engagement-- at some point, yet to be determined. Milani and Sadjadpour seemed to be the most hopeful that Musavi could somehow stay the course and emerge the winner, though neither of them was joining the chorus of rightwing pundits who have been calling for Obama to come out much more loudly for Musavi. Both men seemed to recognize that that could well be a huge negative for Musavi's chances, though Sadjadpour was more openly supportive than Milani of Obama's restraint on the Iran issue.

My impression is that the opinions expressed by these two men were pretty representative of the views of most Iranian-Americans. Of course, the big question is how representative they are of Iranians inside Iran. That still remains to be seen.

Today's Haaretz tells us that Barak

has authorized the building of 300 new homes in the West Bank, defying U.S. calls for a halt to settlement growth.

I guess we got some very early inklings of his fondness for the settlers back in the early days of his (disastrously mishandled) premiership a decade ago, when he went to visit the settlers at Beit El and said something like "I will always stand with you."

It's been a notable feature of Israeli politics that military leaders have always had an extremely easy entree into the top ranks of the political system. In 1998-9 Barak was catapulted almost directly from being IDF chief of staff to being head of Labour's ticket in the 1999 election. Then in the early 2000s, after he lost an internal party election for head of the ticket he left political life completely, to go off and make a ton of-- extremely immoral-- money selling Israeli military systems around the world. (I think he was also put on the board of a couple of big US defense companies, as well.)

But then, the moment the party ran into trouble because of party leader Amir Peretz's disastrous performance as 'defense minister' during the 2006 war on Lebanon, the party called Barak back once again. And once again he catapulted straight to the top of the party-- and into the just-vacated defense minister slot in the government, from which he masterminded the "rehabilitation" of the IDF as a fighting force that could both strike fear into the heart of Israel's neighbors and allow Israelis to feel "good" about themselves again.

Which was the whole "point" of last December's war.

(It worked as planned regarding the second of those goals, but failed to achieve the first one.)

And now, here Barak is again, strutting his Napoleonic-style stuff in defiance of the United States on the settlements issue.

So President Obama, what will your response be?