Month: August 2012
On course for war with Iran
Ilona Gerbakher reports from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies:
Yesterday’s Middle East Institute panel at SAIS presented a report on “Prospects for US-Iran Relations on the Nuclear Issue in the Year Ahead.” The predominant mood was tempered pessimism. War is a real possibility, so it behooves us to redouble diplomatic efforts.
Alan Keiswetter (a scholar at the Middle East Institute, senior consultant at C&O Resources and an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland) thought the nuclear negotiations stalemated and likely to remain that way until after the U.S. election. The parameters of a possible agreement are clear: enrichment allowed up to a low level (3.5-5%) combined with strict safeguards and shipment out of Iran of its more highly enriched uranium.
But it is unclear whether Iran wants a negotiated solution or is just stringing along the negotiations to gain more time. Sanctions alone are unlikely to force agreement, as Iran is ready to hunker down as necessary. Some kind of meatier inducement is going to be needed.
Calls in the Israeli government for military action are growing louder and more strident. Israel perceives an Iranian nuclear capability as an existential threat. The debate among Israelis is no longer “will we strike” but “will the strike be effective enough.” It would be a serious mistake to dismiss the possibility of a unilateral Israeli attack. Some Israel watchers say Prime Minister Netyanyahu thinks he can do what he wants without U.S. concurrence; others feel he is bluffing, to force the U.S. to take a hard line and scare Iran into concessions.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is more united in fear of Iranian pretensions in the Gulf than the Iranians imagine.
Next year will be a real turning point in US-Iran relations over the nuclear issue. Without significant diplomatic progress, the trajectory we are on will lead to military confrontation.
Geneive Abdo, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, contrasted the current tense diplomatic situation with Iran-US relations in 2003, when Tehran cooperated on Afghanistan and was more open to negotiation but Washington was not. Supreme Leader Khamenei sent a letter to then-President Bush proposing a diplomatic breakthrough. Today even a minimal goal of building trust with Iran seems hard to reach. Iranian leaders are convinced that the ultimate U.S. goal is regime change. Khamenei’s hardline conspiratorial beliefs about the U.S. are self-fulfilling prophecies.
The Revolutionary Guard, which has grown powerful under Khamenei, no longer bothers to hide its regional interventions in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. Although arguably they stand the most to lose from sanctions, a military attack on Iran would serve their interests by reaffirming their ideological position.
Also troubling is the decline of Iran’s educated middle class. Those who once called for reform and might have questioned the nuclear program are marginalized. They were our best hope for breaking three decades of hostility but their voices have been silenced. An attack led by the U.S. or Israel would stifle prospects for democratic reform even further.
Israel is not helping matters with its increasingly hardline rhetoric. The way is being paved for it to appear that all options except an Israel-led attack have been eliminated. Don’t expect President Obama to take action until after the election. The best diplomatic option for the moment seems to be to buy more time.
Roby Barrett, the president of a consulting firm specializing in defense and security technology applications, was dismissive of the possibility of a diplomatic solution because “Iran is not really interested in negotiation.” For Iranian leaders and citizens the nuclear program has become a point of national pride. Iran sees nuclear capability as a part of its destiny as a regional power in the Gulf.
The GCC has resigned itself to the fact that Iran will not give up nuclear weapons capability and that the U.S. will need to do something about it. The alternatives are either a nuclear Iran or war. Despite the consequent global economic disturbance, the GCC wants the Iranian nuclear program stopped by hook or by crook. The idea of a nuclear Iran is a redline issue for most Arab states.
We should “never say never,” but diplomatic efforts will probably not stop the march towards war. Given the calcifying hardline between the Israeli and Iranian positions and the distance between America and Israel on this issue, there is a high probability an Israeli attack will go forward. It is unlikely that the U.S. will initiate a strike or engage cooperatively with Israel.
Israel knows they don’t have the military capacity to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. If they strike, it will be in desperation, with the objective of bringing the U.S. into the conflict. That is possible if Iranian retaliation makes the mistake of striking back at the U.S.
In closing, Genieve Abdo raised a vital point: what will happen the morning after? What will be the economic and military fallout of an attack? Will an attack have to be repeated to prevent an intensified Iranian effort to gain nuclear weapons? What are the implications of repeated attacks on Iran?
Daniel Serwer, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and a senior research professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, acted as moderator. He noted that some countries have stood back from nuclear programs, including Brazil and Argentina. Iran is a more difficult case, because Israel will not give up its nuclear weapons and there are several other potential nuclear powers in the region. But if Iran thinks hard about what nuclear weapons might mean for its own security as well as long-term regional and economic stability, it may conclude they are not a good idea.
PS: The video of the event can be downloaded from C-Span.
PPS: Bennett Ramberg comes to similar conclusions.
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Blessed are the peacemakers
With the former Syrian prime minister predicting that the Asad regime is close to collapse, it is high time that the international community considered what comes next. The heavy betting is on a chaotic and difficult to manage situation, but Rami Khouri offers a contrarian view: a peaceful post-Asad order is probable, he says. Is he right?
Khouri describes the conventional wisdom well:
The prevalent perceptions…include that Syria will long remain locked in domestic strife; the Alawites will face eternal hostility and revenge; sectarian civil war is likely to break out; the post-Assad struggle for power will be chaotic and perhaps violent; Syria could easily break up into several smaller ethnic statelets linked to neighboring states or compatriots; Syria’s collapse will trigger warfare across the region, and a few other such scenarios.
The evidence from other Arab transitions offers no support for the expectation that Syria’s transition will be a sectarian free-for-all. Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya’s self-ignited regime changes (unlike Iraq’s Anglo-American initiated mess) have not only avoided major sectarian troubles or violence, but in fact the re-legitimized constitutional processes have included a serious and deliberate attempt to make sure that all population groups are given equal opportunity to partake in public life and governance – not on the basis of sectarian quotas, but on the basis of equal citizenship.
The Syrian people are too intelligent, sophisticated and cosmopolitan to allow themselves to sink into a dark pit of sectarian warfare, even if their sick Baathist-led, Alawite-run power elite uses sectarianism and the specter of post-Assad chaos as tools of intimidation – tools that have failed miserably, in any case.
European forces might not be able to opt out so easily. Deploying as part of a potentially dysfunctional coalition of peacekeepers to calm a festering conflict is certainly not an appealing concept. But leaving the conflict to get worse — or letting Russia and regional powers carve up Syria, almost certainly fostering future wars — could be far more dangerous. All of this means that, whether it wants to or not, Europe may not be able to avoid playing a leading role in efforts to stabilize Syria.
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Self-reliance, not
I am going to stray today from my usual single-minded focus on the world’s conflict zones to comment on the life of Paul Ryan. I do this knowing full well that vice presidential candidates do precious little to decide electoral contests. My inspiration comes in part from his life story, which happens to resemble my own, and in part from the efforts of the American media to make a coherent narrative where none exists.
My father died when I was 15, Ryan’s when he was 16. Ryan’s family sounds as if was a good deal better off than mine, which was precariously lower middle class. Like his, my mother went back to school after my father’s death and got a doctorate. My mother worked in addition–I am not clear about Ryan’s. Like Ryan, I got through college on the Social Security benefits paid after my father’s death, plus generous scholarship funds (thank you Haverford!). I have worked hard since the age of 28, as has Ryan. We both inherited some money.
Nothing in this life story has turned me towards Ayn Rand and her extremist views. Quite to the contrary: it is clear to me, as it should be to Paul Ryan, that he and I were both born to relative privilege, if only because our families were well-educated. We recovered from untimely parental deaths with help from the U.S. government (yes, Social Security really is a U.S. government program) and hard work by our remaining parent. We have had good jobs, his paid entirely by the U.S. government and most of mine as well. Family members have been generous in their bequests, for which we should both be grateful.
These life stories tell me that getting a bit of help–whether from family or the U.S. government–is not inconsistent with hard work. I don’t claim to be unusually self-reliant, and neither should Paul Ryan. Our safety nets worked. We took good advantage of that and have enjoyed many rewards as a result.
There are a lot of people in this country who don’t have the same safety nets. Paul Ryan knows who they are, as his political party is assiduously trying to prevent them from voting. That is mean-spirited but rational. The poor certainly aren’t going to vote for those who want to dismantle the safety nets that do exist. Republicans are fond of accusing Barack Obama of promoting class warfare. That is backwards. It is those trying to dismantle the government’s social safety nets who are promoting class warfare.
What about family? This is the really difficult subject. Poverty and family disruption go together: the poor marry less and divorce more, the unmarried and divorced are poorer than the married. Despite the “marriage penalty” in our tax code, the financial incentives to marry and to remain married are so great it is really hard to understand why anyone does something else, but increasingly people do. This too is not accounted for in Ayn Rand.
What does any of this have to do with war and peace, or more generally with U.S. foreign policy? A great deal. I’ve already noted how Paul Ryan’s budget would gut diplomacy and development assistance while increasing military expenditure in an era that requires more of the former and less of the latter. Someone who doesn’t believe in safety nets at home would not be interested in exporting them either. Paul Ryan, product of a middle class family that provided ample education and support (supplemented by the U.S. government), doesn’t want anything like those advantages given to the poor in this country or abroad.
This is not a consistent narrative of self-reliance.
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This week’s peace picks
1. Prospects for U.S.-Iran Relations on the Nuclear Issue in the Years Ahead, Tuesday August 13, 3:30pm-5:00pm
Venue: 1717 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, District of Columbia 20036
The Middle East Institute is proud to present its new MEI Scholar Insight. Entitled ‘Prospects for U.S.-Iran Relations on the Nuclear Issue in the Year Ahead,’ this publication draws upon the broad expertise of 20 Middle East Institute scholars and outside guest experts to examine three scenarios for Iran: diplomacy, containment, and military action. Over two roundtable sessions, participants analyzed U.S. policy, Iranian policy, Israel’s role in regard to the scenarios, reactions to prospective scenarios by the GCC states, Russia, and the other members of the P5+1, and the energy markets. The resulting report is a composite of MEI Scholar analysis on the above issues and seeks to capture points of substantial agreement as well as of divergence. Please join us for the launch of this MEI featured publication and a discussion with principal authors Allen Keiswetter and Roby Barrett and contributors Geneive Abdo and Melissa Mahle.
Register for the event here
2. Celebrating Future Sudanese Leaders, Wednesday August 15, 5:30pm-8:30pm
Venue: Elliot School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20052602, Lindner Commons
Join Banaa.org for an evening ceremony: Celebrating Future Sudanese Leaders. The ceremony will honor Banaa Scholars, who will share their personal experiences, their motivations and their visions for peace and development in Sudan. The event will also feature interactive discussion about the Banaa Scholarship Program and its objective to leverage the energy at US universities to promote cross-cultural understanding and to foster leadership among talented young Sudanese. This will be the concluding event of the first annual Banaa Summer Summit held at the George Washington University in Washington DC.
Register for the event here
3. BBG Research Series: Nigeria Media Use 2012, Thursday, August 16, 9:00am-10:00am
Venue: Gallup World Headquarters, 901 F Street NW (Entrance on 9th Street), Washington, DC 20004
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and Gallup invite you to attend the BBG Research Series briefing, Nigeria Media Use 2012. The BBG and Gallup will unveil new findings about media consumption habits in Nigeria, including strong growth of digital media and the continued popularity of radio.
The country’s longstanding digital media gap has largely disappeared as mobile phone use has exploded nationwide, and Nigerians in the northern regions are more likely than ever before to turn to TV (67%), the Internet (20%), and SMS messages (45%) for news and information. The new research also reveals that Nigerians remain avid radio listeners, with 88% listening to the radio for news and information weekly or more frequently. Additionally, a growing number of mobile phone users (39%) in the north have used phones to listen to radio in the last week. In terms of content, the vast majority (83%) of Nigerians indicate a strong interest in health and healthcare issues.
Speakers will include:
• Chris Stewart, Senior Managing Consultant, Gallup
• Bruce Sherman, Director of Strategy and Development, BBG
• Robert Tortora, Chief Methodologist and Regional Research Director for Africa, Gallup
• William Bell, Research Director, International Broadcasting Bureau
The event will include a presentation of the key findings from the study, as well as a methodological overview and a review of historical media trends in Nigeria.
Register for the event here
4. Iraq and the Politics of Oil, Middle East Institute, Thursday August 16, 3:00pm-4:45pm
Venue: 1800 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036
The Middle East Institute is proud to host a discussion about Iraq’s oil sector with Naufel Al-Hassan, Raad Al Kadiri, and Denise Natali. Iraq’s crude oil production is recovering, producing a significant jump in oil exports in 2012. And yet the growth in Iraq’s oil sector has exacerbated longstanding challenges, aggravating tensions between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurds and fostering accusations of patronage and corruption on both sides. How has the Iraqi government benefited from the recovery of Iraq’s oil industry? What hope is there of Baghdad and Erbil reaching an agreement over how to divide or share resources? What are the opportunities and challenges faced by international oil companies seeking to do business in Iraq? These are among some of the issues to be addressed by this distinguished panel.
Speakers:
Naufel Al-Hassan
Raad Al Kadiri
Denise Natali
Moderator:
Allen Keiswetter
Register for the event here
5. Religious Extremism in Africa: The Case of Nigeria, Thursday August 16, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Venue: Lehrman Auditorium, 214 Massachusetts Avenue Northeast, Washington, DC
Since his election to the position of Primate, the Most Reverend Okoh has seen a rising tide of violence throughout his home country of Nigeria. He has witnessed firsthand the damage and destruction caused by Boko Haram and has had to deal directly with their country-wide insurgency. Given the Archbishop’s leadership of the largest Anglican Province in the world – 22 million Anglicans in Nigeria (including President Goodluck Jonathan) – and his engagement with national and international governments and leaders concerning the religious conflict in Nigeria, Primate Okoh offers a unique viewpoint on the escalating violence that is occurring throughout Nigeria at the hands of Boko Haram. Primate Okoh will examine the major factors that are contributing to this violence, with a particular focus on the religious ideology that drives Boko Haram to target churches and civilians throughout Nigeria.
Register for the event here
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What is a counter autocoup?
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi Sunday abrogated the constitutional declaration that protected military privileges, arrogated to himself full executive and legislative powers and replaced the country’s upper echelon military chiefs, including former Supreme Council of the Armed Forces chief Field Marshall Tantawi. This is an autocoup (that’s a coup conducted by people already in power against another part of the governing establishment). Or, to be more precise, this is a counter autocoup, since the Egyptian military conducted an autocoup against Morsi in June when they arrogated to themselves broad powers.
I wrote then:
The American press describes the army as “cementing” power. That’s unquestionably what they are trying to do. But it is unlikely to work….It is yet to be seen whether the military has cemented power, or has deluded itself so thoroughly that its moves will be seen one day as demented.
One could of course say something similar about Morsi now. It is unclear whether the army will put up with this seizure of power.
My guess is that it will, not least because Morsi is showing real political skill in choosing people to man (it is almost entirely men) his government. While not as broadly based as some might have hoped, the cabinet he named last week was more technocratic than some expected and included a sprinkling of political rivals as well as holdovers from the last military government. He has also chosen experienced military figures to replace the Minister of Defense (for the last few days Field Marshall Tantawi) and the chief of the army staff.
Morsi’s great advantage over his military rivals is one he seems to understand well: legitimacy, backed domestically by the organizational capabilities of the Muslim Brotherhood and supported internationally by the United States and Saudi Arabia. So long as he shows a modicum of respect for what Yezid Sayigh describes well as the officers’ republic, he may well pull off this latest lurch in Egypt’s dubka between military dictatorship and popular democracy. He has to be careful about paring back the officers’ economic perks and military privileges.
Let’s hope Morsi’s gamble works. Egypt faces growing security problems in the Sinai and serious economic challenges. It needs an effective government and a new constitution. Morsi had appeared to yield to the Supreme Constitutional Court’s decision to dissolve the elected parliament, leaving the constitutional process a shambles. He now has to decide how to reconstitute a legislature and create a committee to write a new constitution.* He would be wise to reach out farther than he did in naming the government towards political forces beyond the Muslim Brotherhood: women, Christians and secularists should have a role that they have so far been denied.
The Egyptian revolution is proving by far the most fraught of those Arab awakenings that have brought down dictators so far. Tunisia, Libya and Yemen all have their problems, but all three seem to be progressing, with fits and starts. Egypt still seems uncertain of its direction, not least because it allowed the military an out-sized role in the post-autocratic transition. But it is also important to recognize that Egypt is much more populous, poorer and diverse than the other Arab awakening countries. This latest turn may not be its last. But Morsi is correct to try to establish civilian control.
*Michelle Dunne points out that there is already a “constituent assembly,” created by the now-dissolved parliament and the object of on-going litigation, working on a new constitution. Morsi presumably has the option of going along with that parlous process.
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I can’t wait for the movie!
Here is the review of James Lyons’ Kiss of the Butterfly that I posted today on Amazon.com:
What a pleasure to find all these five-star reviews already in place!
I am not a vampire novel kind of guy. I can’t remember ever reading one. Nor do I read a lot of books about the Balkans, of which I’ve gotten my fill in the past 20 years of frequent visits there. I don’t carry a Hawthorne stake or saturate myself in garlic. I haven’t met any vampires at all. Just about all the evil I’ve seen done there is justified as doing good, or as something that couldn’t be stopped. If you are looking for a centuries-old red-eyed femme fatale who can instantly transform into a werewolf, I wouldn’t waste any time on a trip to Serbia or Bosnia.
But that reality doesn’t alter the genius of Kiss of the Butterfly, which is in part a roman a clef that uses folklorically accurate vampires (who is which you’ll need to discover for yourself–the book includes the usual disclaimer) to interweave 1990s Balkans with the previous several centuries of carefully researched history. But none of that gets in the way a really good tale, one that moves quickly and compellingly from California academe through unconsummated romance to homicidal mayhem. This is an ideal quick read for the those who like their fantasy connected to reality.
I should confess that I know James Lyon, who is one of the very best American experts on the Balkans, where he has lived for the better part of the past two decades. I have enjoyed many a conversation with him and knew he was well-informed both on current events and Balkans history. But I had no idea he knew anything about vampire folklore. What a pleasure to discover this additional dimension, in particular in a form so well calculated to entertain. I can’t wait for the movie!
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