Day: January 24, 2013
Masterful
Secretary of State-designate John Kerry was masterful today in his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing. It wasn’t so much the details of what he said, but the breadth and depth. This is a guy who really knows international affairs.
His prepared statement was notable for some high points: the emphasis on the importance of American economic health in determining the country’s role abroad, the clarity about preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons and the vigor of his defense of the State Department budget. I would also note that John Kerry regards USAID, whose functions he mentioned but not its name, as an integral part of the State Department.
Then Kerry showed a lot of agility in dealing with not only the questions but also a demonstrator, expressing respect for her cries to be heard. He defended Secretary of Defense-designate Hagel’s views on getting rid of nuclear weapons, which he said was an aspiration for a world different from the one we live in today. He described his own changed view of Syria’s President Asad, whom he now hopes to see go soon.
He showed his clear commitment to maintaining the high priority Secretary Clinton has given to gender issues. He was non-committal on the Keystone pipeline, deferring to the official process under way. He was gentle with the Russians, citing their cooperation on particular issues (other than Syria). He was supportive of American anti-corruption and human rights efforts abroad. He showed he knows what is going on in Sudan’s Blue Nile and South Kordofan provinces. He parried accusations about Benghazi.
Of course part of the reason for this masterful performance is the attitude of the questioners, who showed enormous respect for their long-standing colleague. Gone was the idiot questioning of yesterday’s hearing with Secretary of State Clinton on the Benghazi murders. There was little “gotcha.” Certainly had the President nominated Susan Rice, who is far more combative, the tone if not the substance of the hearing would have been different. In a week’s time the Hagel hearing may be far more contentious, even if Hagel himself comes close to matching Kerry in knowledge and equanimity.
On Syria, Kerry advocated changing Bashar al Asad’s calculations, but he was unclear about the means to achieve that. He wants an orderly transition. The Russians appear willing, but differ on the timing and manner of Bashar’s departure. Kerry fears sectarian strife, implosion of the Syrian state and what they might mean for chemical weapons.
The Syrian opposition has not been ready to talk, Kerry said. In a sentence he struck–one of his few moments of hesitation in this long hearing–he started to say that we need to increase the ability of the opposition to do something unspecified. I’d sure like to know how that sentence was supposed to end: increase their ability to negotiate? increase their ability to strike the regime militarily? There’s a big difference. It sounded to me more like he wanted them to be more flexible on negotiations, but I’m not certain.
Kerry hit a lot of other subjects. On Afghanistan, he put his chips on a good April 2014 presidential election, which has to provide legitimacy to Karzai’s successor. Kerry wants “a metric” for stopping infiltration and attacks on Americans from Pakistani territory. He noted China is “all over” Africa (and America has to get into the game). Al Qaeda has dispersed at the urging of Osama bin Laden and is now a threat in the Arabian Peninsula and the Maghreb, where the solution is not only drone strikes but (unspecified) civilian efforts. We don’t like what Egyptian President Morsi says about Jews, but we need him to maintain the peace treaty with Israel. On Israel/Palestine, Kerry was cagey and refused to be drawn out, except to reiterate commitment to the two-state solution. The solution to climate change is energy policy, which will enable job growth. The “war on drugs” is ill-conceived. We need to do more on the demand side.
Here is the lengthy (four hours?) video of the hearing:
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Egypt two years on
The Egyptian revolution will be two years young tomorrow. What has it accomplished? Where does it stand? Where is it headed?
The revolution’s greatest accomplishment occurred two years ago: the fall of Hosni Mubarak from power. There ensued a terrifically chaotic year and a half, best described by Marc Lynch as Calvinball: a game in which the participants constantly change the rules. The period of military rule was particularly shambolic, but Egypt did not stabilize immediately after the election in June 2012 of Mohammed Morsi as president.
In the subsequent months, he managed however to push the army aside, preserving many of its prerogatives but depriving it of governing power and accumulating it for himself. He also managed to push through a December referendum on a controversial new constitution that leaves openings for Islamist rule. Parliamentary elections are to be held at a still unspecified date in April, under an electoral law prepared by a Shura Council (upper house) that he controls.
Muslim Brotherhood expert Eric Trager thinks Egypt will emerge from this process as a “competitive theocracy.” The main rivals will be the highly disciplined and hierarchical Muslim Brotherhood and the more radical and fragmented Salafi fundamentalists. It is not clear which will have the advantage, as the Brotherhood’s discipline and hierarchy is less appealing to the young than the low threshold to entry into Salafist ranks.
This discounts completely the secularists and liberals who more or less united against the parliamentary referendum, which they lost, and are trying to hold together for the parliamentary elections as the National Salvation Front. Divided, they have so far fared poorly in Egypt’s several rounds of voting since the fall of Mubarak but hope to do better united against the now dominant Islamists.
President Morsi, while riding high on election and referendum victories, is proving less than effective in handling the economy, which is still in a nose dive, and the Americans, who distrust his attitude on Israel and find his past and present bad-mouthing of Jews offensive. But neither Morsi, who needs American support at the IMF and World Bank, nor his critics is interested in creating too big a breach. Washington needs Cairo to maintain the peace treaty with Israel, act as a brake on Hamas in Gaza and remain stalwart against Iran.
Democracy, as anyone watching the U.S. Congress knows too well, is like making sausage: unappetizing in the process, even if the product is highly palatable. Some think the Egyptians are just learning to be democrats. I’m inclined in that direction. But then an Egyptian friend comes to visit and worries about whether Morsi will be deploying religious police to prevent young men and women from holding hands in public. The Saudi precedent hovers.
The best that can be said about Islamist domination of the political spectrum in Egypt is that a) it reflects the will of the Egyptian people and b) it may not last, since the split between the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists is likely to continue. The April elections really are the secularist liberals’ last, best chance of gaining political traction for the next four years. If they fail, as seems likely, Egypt will experiment with a constitution that leaves a lot of room for Islamist maneuvering in a society that is more interested in economic results than theocratic correctness. But that is how most Iranians feel also, to no avail.
The Egyptian revolution is still young. The outcome remains in doubt. Morsi is no democrat: he has brought many more cases to court for supposed offenses to the president than Mubarak did. But Morsi is not alone in determining the outcome. The Salafists and the liberals will tug Egypt in other directions, as will the army and the business community. How these vectors sum to determine the ultimate direction will depend on many factors: election outcomes, the economy, the courts, relations among Egypt’s religious groups, threats to Egypt’s security, relations with its neighbors, the course of events in the region.
Ten years on we’ll have a clear picture. Tomorrow what we’ll see are massive demonstrations pulling Egypt in dramatically different directions.
PS: Bassem Sabry also still has hopes for democracy.
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What would a patriot do?
I have no way of knowing who is responsible for a series of incidents in Kosovo targeting Serbs. What I do know is that whoever does these things is no patriot.
There is, as usual, some background here. The removal last week of a monument to fallen Albanian insurgents against the Milosevic regime* that had been erected in the southern Serbian town of Presevo has angered Albanians in Kosovo, including some who have sought refuge in Kosovo from police harassment in Presevo. It was foolish of the Serbian government to bother about the monument, but it was smart enough not to destroy it. Instead it is said to have taken it to Belgrade, as evidence in a court case.
Someone in Kosovo seems to think the right response is violence against Serbs and Serb property. That is not just foolish but positively counter-productive, as it will be taken by some as proof that Albanians aren’t civilized and don’t belong in Europe. It would be far wiser for those concerned to protest peacefully and prepare to argue their case in Serbia’s courts. The right response in Kosovo is for the government to arrest those responsible and charge them. Impunity for crimes against Serbs besmirches the Kosovo state and reduces its claim to being just.
People in Kosovo might also give a bit of thought to their own monuments, which tend to glorify Albanian history in general and the Kosovo Liberation Army specifically. We are all entitled to our heroes, but a bit of sensitivity to the other side in a war now almost 15 years past is in order. After all, the Presevo Albanians were asking that the Serbian government put up with a monument to insurgents who had killed Serbs. Where in Kosovo can I find monuments to Serbs? This may be asking too much, but at the very least Kosovo Albanians need to respect Serb cemeteries and leave them undisturbed.
That’s what a patriot would do.
*PS, added January 24: This is inaccurate and misleading. The Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac was active also under the democratic regime that came after Milosevic’s fall in October 2000.
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