Month: December 2010
How should Iraq deal with its neighbors?
With ample evidence that its neighbors are playing a strong role in Iraq, it is puzzling why the Obama Administration has been reluctant to deal with them in a more concerted way. Following on a Bush Administration that had only reluctantly and belatedly engaged with Iraq’s neighbors, I’d have expected Obama to move aggressively in this direction, as it did in others recommended by the Iraq Study Group (caveat emptor: I was its executive director).
Why hasn’t this happened? First, because the Administration has dropped Iraq way down on its list of diplomatic priorities, especially with Tehran (where the nuclear issue is given absolute priority). Second, because some of the neighbors have begun doing the right things, largely on their own (but likely with some push from Washington): Turkey has dramatically improved its rapport with both Baghdad and Erbil (the de facto capital of Iraqi Kurdistan), Saudi Arabia gave ample backing to Iyad Allawi in the Iraqi elections, and Kuwait has begun to patch up relations with Baghdad, as has Egypt.
The Americans claim that they are giving priority to Iraq in their bilateral relations with each of the neighbors, but what they have not done is to exploit the kind of regional forum that proved useful under the Bush Administration (and has often proved useful in other stabilization situations). What is missing is a concerted regional effort to ensure Iraq’s stability and to block efforts by neighbors, especially Syria, to pursue their own interests in ways that may destabilize Iraq.
It is not too late for this kind of neighbors’ diplomacy, but Baghdad, not Washington, would now have to initiate it. Once the new government is fully formed and approved in the Council of Representatives (parliament), the Prime Minister would do well to invite his neighbors, the U.S. and NATO to a regional conference to discuss the way forward.
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Both protest too much, methinks
…a plea for a foreign solution to regional problems is a cop-out, not a serious request for action.
That may be, but the Iranians are clearly concerned, with Ahmedinejad claiming that the diploleaks are an American plot that will not affect Tehran’s “legal” relationships with other countries:
Iran is far from loving the leaks, as the headline of Chas’ piece suggests, and is doing its best to discredit them. Ahmedinejad and Chas protest too much for me to believe that they are not concerned that the leaks have lowered the barrier to military action.
But for the moment, military action is not at the top of the agenda. Covert action (the computer worm Stuxnet and assassinations of Iranian scientists being the most visible components) appears to be slowing Iranian technological progress.
While expectations are low, the P5+1 (Permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) meeting with Iran Monday and Tuesday in Geneva is the best diplomatic bet for a deal that would allow Iran to enrich uranium but limit the amount and extent of the product. Have we ever done better than this with countries that have stepped back from bomb making? We shouldn’t expect more from Iran.
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No waste of Lady Ashton’s time
Hossein Askari yesterday offers over at the National Interest a scathing denunciation of next week’s P5+1 talks with Iran, calling them a waste of Lady Ashton’s time. His preferred option: tightened unilateral sanctions and support for the Iranian people:
All the U.S. administration needs is political will to support the people of Iran in their struggle for freedom, human rights, a say in governance and a better future for all Iranians.
While I am delighted to support their struggle, I really do wish the piece had not been published with this stunningly martial photograph of the late Shah,
which doesn’t quite mesh with the freedom and human rights message.
Besides, the popular struggle against the regime seems to be quiescent for the moment: best we use this time to make whatever progress we can on the nuclear issue.
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The Sudan negotiators need to hurry
Things are heating up in Abyei, an oil-endowed region that lies along the boundary between North and South Sudan. According to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, Abyei should decide in a referendum whether to join the North or the South, where a January 9 referendum will decide whether the South will declare independence next July.
But North and South have failed to agree on who should be permitted to vote in the Abyei referendum, with the North backing Arabic-speaking nomads who enter Abyei, which is largely settled by Ngok Dinka farmers loyal to the South, for a substantial portion of the year.
There is talk of a negotiated settlement of Abyei’s fate, to be reached in talks led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki. The negotiators had better hurry.
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A helpful reminder of the Ottoman Empire
Why is this helpful? Because it illustrates how many of today’s enduring conflicts–not only those termed “Middle Eastern”–are rooted in the Ottoman Empire and its immediate neighborhood: Bosnia, Kosovo, Greece/Turkey, Armenia/Azerbaijan, Israel/Arabs (Palestine, Syria, Lebanon), Iraq, Iraq/Iran, Shia (Iran)/Sunni (Saudi Arabia, Egypt), North/South Sudan, Yemen.
Ottoman success in managing the many ethnic and sectarian groups inhabiting the Empire, without imposing conformity to a single identity (and without providing equal rights) has left the 21st century with problems it finds hard to understand, never mind resolve.
In much of the former Ottoman Empire, many people refuse to be labeled a “minority” just because their numbers are fewer than other groups, states are regarded as formed by ethnic groups rather than by individuals, individual rights are often less important than group rights and being “outvoted” is undemocratic.
A Croat leader in Bosnia told me 15 years ago that one thing that would never work there was “one man, one vote.” It just wasn’t their way of doing things. For a decision to be valid, a majority of each ethnic group was needed , not a majority of the population as a whole.
In a society of this sort, a boycott by one ethnic group is regarded as invalidating a decision made by the majority: the Serbs thought their boycott of the Bosnia independence referendum should have invalidated it, but the European Union had imposed a 50 per cent plus one standard. There lie the origins of war.
The question of whether Israel is a Jewish state is rooted in the same thinking that defined Yugoslavia as the kingdom of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and it bears a family resemblance to the thinking behind “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Albania.” If it is the ethnic group that forms the state, why should there be more than one state in which that ethnic group lives?
Ours is a state (yes, that is the proper term for what we insist on calling the Federal Government) built on a concept of individual rights, equal for all. The concept challenges American imaginations from time to time: certainly it did when Truman overcame strong resistance to integrate the US Army, and it is reaching the limits of John McCain’s imagination in the debate over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the march of American history is clearly in the direction of equal individual rights.
That is a direction many former Ottoman territories find it difficult to take, because some groups have more substantial rights than others; even when the groups’ rights are equal, they can veto each other. A lot of the state-building challenge in those areas arises from this fundamental difference.
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The Iranian enrichment gambit gets more explicit
This is from a BBC interview, as reported by Foreign Policy: Hillary Clinton says
We’ve told them that they are entitled to the peaceful use of civil nuclear energy, but they haven’t yet restored the confidence of the international community to the extent where the international community would feel comfortable allowing them to enrich. They can enrich uranium at some future date once they have demonstrated that they can do so in a responsible manner in accordance with international obligations.
In diplospeak, she is clearly floating the idea that there might be a deal if Iran will agree not to enrich too much. This is published under a headline that reads Clinton on Iran: The regime is on the ropes. Nice cover for a soft message to Tehran.
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