Day: July 18, 2011
Nonviolent discipline is still vital
While I am afraid I’ve written this all before, it is important to reiterate now that sectarianism is rearing its ugly head in Syria: maintaining nonviolent discipline is vital. You can kill a few Alawites (the heterodox minority to which President Bashar al Assad belongs), but the regime can kill many more protesters.
There is nothing to be gained and everything to be lost from violence, especially if it is directed at the security forces. You want them to come over to your side. They won’t do that if they are being attacked. Instead, they’ll use the violence as justification for cracking down, and the uncommitted portion of the population will likely lean towards law and order.
What about the regime thugs? Don’t demonstrators get to respond to them in kind? Unfortunately for those of us who are not principled pacifists, the answer is no. Violence is their favored terrain; you want to contest them on terrain that favors you, not them. Best is in public, under the glare of TV cameras.
This is particularly difficult in Syria, which has managed to control the presence of international journalists and will presumably make life hard for those who report too enthusiastically about the demonstrations or too disapprovingly about the regime. One of the few ways to get a regime to rein in its thugs is international reporting on their abuses.
The Syrian protesters have demonstrated a remarkable degree of unity and cleverness in confronting a regime that has numerous advantages: it has no reason to fear military international intervention, it has Iranian backing, the Syrian middle class in Damascus and Aleppo has hesitated to go to the streets, the international community is reluctant to get involved, and the security forces appear to have backed the regime so far in all but a relatively few, isolated circumstances.
There is, nevertheless, a growing sense that Assad will not be able to restore the status quo ante. He is in trouble even if he manages to weather the current wave of protests, which still seems to be growing and spreading. On the merits, his regime should collapse soon. But if it fails to cooperate, the only option is to keep up the protests, and keep them nonviolent.
A demonstration, allegedly in Damascus yesterday (no sign of the security forces that I see). The Youtube caption reads: Chants of “Our Blood Won’t Be Sold” ring out through the Midan neighborhood of Damascus, Capitol of Syria as these youth march for the overthrow of the fascist Dictatorship of Bashar Al Assad on Saturday night, July 17, 2011:
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The real budget losers won’t be military
After several days of Casey Anthony, Carmeggedon, and Rebekah Brooks, my TV finally produced something worth watching: the U.S./Japan women’s World Cup match. The two fading powers of the late 20th century produced a super ball game, which should remind us that even in decline great powers have a lot of clout left.
This is the trick the Americans need to learn in foreign policy. Britain lost its empire more than 30 years ago but still punches above its weight. Its military prowess is not the only reason. The Foreign Office and the Department for International Development are serious operations. I am not a great admirer of the Quai d’Orsay. If you want to see a Foreign Ministry other than the British one that makes a difference, visit The Hague, capital of another lost empire.
Jim Lindsay in yesterday’s Washington Post was in full angst over the impact of how the debt issues are handled and the impact on the U.S. military. That is not what worries me. I’ll bet the Defense Department gets a relatively small cut, after a decade of having its budget doubled, without counting war expenditures. The Obama Administration and House Republicans have both proposed -3.5%, but the Senate is likely to insist on a smaller number.
It is the State Department and USAID that are likely to get whacked. They have finally produced a blueprint for dealing with current national security challenges that begins to make sense: the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. What are the odds of much of it being implemented in the current budget environment? Sure, they can move a few people around, but there is no hope for Foggy Bottom without a top to bottom reform that would require a good deal of money. House Republicans proposed a 43% cut in the 150 account (“international affairs”) relative to the Administration’s dead-on-arrival 2012 proposal. That’s likely worse than what will actually happen, but the State Department and AID are in for a shock.
One reason is that half the country thinks they already have a lot of money–25% of the Federal budget, and wants that reduced to 10% (see http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/nov10/ForeignAid_Nov10_quaire.pdf). The real number is well under 1.5%, and declining for several decades. Could it be that State and AID have not handled their relationship with the American people as well as the Pentagon has?
A friend commented after the soccer game, “the Japanese have had an even worse year than we’ve had. It’s good they won.” I did not agree–I wanted the Americans to win. But like my friend I’ll be cheering for the civilian underdogs in the budget battles. They’ve had a bad couple of decades. It is time to correct the absurd imbalance between the military arm of our government, which is healthy and well-exercised, and the civilian arm, which is weak and getting weaker.
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