Month: March 2013
The new Egyptian criminal
On the supposition that everyone should know what it takes to get arrested for insulting Egypt’s President Morsi, denigrating Islam and disturbing the public peace, here is the January 27 broadcast with English subtitles of Bassem Youssef, who posted bail today and was released. His Jon Stewart rip off is obvious, but I’d still recommend thinking twice before confronting this cardiac surgeon in court:
Does a country with Egypt’s problems need to worry about Bassem Youssef? Maybe the answer to that question is “yes,” if you are as humorless and insecure as President Morsi.
PS, April 3: As if to prove the point, today the US embassy in Cairo caught enough hell from the Egyptian government to delete a tweet referring to this Jon Stewart skit about Morsi’s reaction to Bassem Youssef’s criticism:
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Arab uprisings fail to satisfy the street
From Tunisia to Egypt new transitional leadership has yet to address the economic, security and structural grievances that triggered the Arab spring uprisings. The concerns that triggered the revolutions continue to pull the people into the streets.
Why have the new political leaders failed to address these concerns? According to University of California professor Laurie Brand, the desire to consolidate power in the face of new challenges and constraints, rather than domestic mass politics, drives current post-revolutionary leaders’ behavior. In her paper Arab Uprisings and Mass Politics: Possibilities, Constraints, and Uncertainty discussed this week at the Wilson Center, Brand examines the mass politics of Egypt and Jordan to understand the effects of increased popular political mobilization on Arab states’ regional behavior.
Egyptian President Morsi’s commitment to the peace treaty with Israel is an example of his continuation of domestically unpopular policies. Morsi’s approach to the Gaza tunnels has proven even tougher than Mubarak’s. Morsi’s confidence after his mediating role between Israel and Gaza led him to assume extra-constitutional powers, causing the greatest domestic uproar of this presidency and showing how disassociated he has become from mass sentiment. The economic crisis and Egypt’s IMF requests make this an inopportune moment for the Egyptian president to risk alienating the US by giving in to domestic anti-treaty sentiment. An “uncomfortable marriage of convenience” between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military ties Morsi’s hands on corruption, a main popular grievance. Several articles in the new constitution protect key military interests at the expense of transparency. The $1.3 billion in annual US military aid keeps Morsi from stepping on the military’s toes.
The real differences between Morsi and Mubarak’s foreign policies occur at the regional level, not in relation to the US. Under Morsi, Egypt entertains closer relations with Muslim Brotherhood-sympathising Qatar than with Mubarak’s preferred Saudi Arabia. Morsi’s visit to Iran also represents a significant break with the previous regime. These shifts in regional alignment did not result from mass political pressures, but rather from an attempt to reassert Egypt’s independent regional role.
Much like Morsi, Jordan’s King Abdullah has remained steadfast in the face of mass protests, even as young East Bankers have mobilized in the Harika movements and directly criticize the government, calling for its removal. Jordan’s relations with the US have remained unchanged, while its relations with Egypt have chilled. Military exercises between the US and Jordan testify to the continued relationship, while Jordan’s domestically unpopular containment of the Muslim Brotherhood renders relations with the Egyptian government difficult.
Since the beginning of the Arab spring, popular demands have focused on domestic issues like unemployment, inflation, insecurity and the rule of law. These mass demands have not however shaped the current Arab leaders’ behavior. They are far more interested in solidifying their power in the face of regional and international challenges and constraints. The growing gap between the people of Arab Spring countries and their governments will probably become a source of renewed conflict in the future. Marginalization of the youth and labor movements – what Brand calls the “footmen of the revolution”—resulted in the their failure to produce charismatic leaders with legitimate revolutionary credentials. Instead of new, young leaders coming to the fore, long suppressed, exiled or co-opted opposition leaders attained political power. Once in charge, these leaders did not find serious disagreement with their predecessors’ international alignments and presented no remedy for the countries’ domestic issues.
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Optimism/diplomats = courage/soldiers
Chas Freeman appeared Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment to introduce his new collection of essays on China, Interesting Times: China, America and the Shifting Balance of Prestige. Those who know Washington will understand right away that such an event promises more wonkish amusement than dry analysis, as Chas is one America’s premier racconteurs and iconoclasts. From his early reference to DC’s “belief tanks” to his later claim that optimism is to diplomats what courage is to soldiers, Chas was in good form. To acclaim by several in the audience, he characterized the Chinese system as a unique form of “cadre capitalism”: a party-based system of political boosterism and entrepreneurialism.
But he was also serious in trying to dispel the misperceptions that cloud American and Chinese views of each other. Americans view the Chinese as their mirror image. But in fact the Chinese do not share our interest in military power, especially of the naval sort. China is an Asian land power as much as it is an Asian Pacific sea power. The Chinese are emerging from a lengthy period of weakness and humiliation, but their main concerns are economic and social. Our focus on the military dimensions of competition with China could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The Americans need a more multidimensional and multilateral approach to China. This should not aim for dominance. Chinese power is growing far too rapidly for that. We have to be realistic about our own influence and power, especially in the current political and budgetary environment. The pivot to Asia was the right thing to do, but we should be careful not to let it be seen as antagonistic to China. Polarization will not serve our purposes. Nor will the Trans-Pacific Partnership. How can we hope to establish an economic partnership that excludes the biggest and most important economy in the region?
Chinese leaders are feeling domestically vulnerable, as the ideological underpinnings of the Communist system have rotted away. The leadership knows China needs economic, legal and political reform. Legitimacy is now based excessively on development, including breakneck export growth that has to give way to greater domestic consumption. Rule of law is lacking. The Chinese are defensive and suspicious, as they have no political model to offer the rest of the world. But the leadership is trying to dampen nationalism, not inflame it. Beijing wants to avoid territorial conflicts with neighbors, which in any event should not concern the US. China will not challenge freedom of navigation. It defends the Westphalian state system. We are the revolutionaries introducing new elements like responsibility to protect, which the Chinese see as destabilizing.
The “China dream” is not something Americans should fear. It is still inchoate. Xi Jingping thinks a great nation needs a great dream, but he hasn’t really said what it is to be. The Chinese are creating alternatives to the Bretton Woods financial institutions, but that is due to our own refusal to institute governance reforms that reflect the growing power of the BRICs and other emerging powers. On the many demographic, environmental and social challenges China faces, Chas was confident the Chinese would be able to manage.
What did he say about optimism and diplomats?
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The dogs of war: bark or bite?
Tension has been building for weeks on the Korean peninsula. Kim Jong-un has unleashed a string of threats against South Korea and the United States after conducting a missile launch in December and a nuclear test in February in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. He gains domestic traction from this belligerence, something he no doubt needs after succeeding to the presidency last December at under 30 years of age. He also hopes for payoffs from the international community, which have been a common response to North Korean provocations in the past.
President Obama had been inclined to a low key response. The North Korean threats all too clearly aim at extorting aid and trade from the outer world. The President has said he won’t play that game.
Yesterday the Americans chose a different course: they advertised the flight of B2 stealth bombers from the United States that conducted a mock bombing mission at a range in South Korea. This was part of a military exercise the Americans and South Koreans regard as routine but the North objects to. The implication was clear: if the North attacks the South, the United States will assist in the military response.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The best account I’ve heard of the rest of it is Tom Gjelten’s piece on NPR this morning. It makes clear that the United States has committed itself to joint, coordinated action with the South against the North, if the North attacks and the Americans are consulted and agree on the response. But the bottom line of the piece is that the North may be getting enough of what it wants from threatening to attack and therefore will not go through with it.
For the Americans, there is a great temptation here. Diplomatic efforts to block North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles with which to deliver them have failed. It is now only a matter of a few years before North Korea acquires and deploys a serious nuclear arsenal. This, it figures, will deter efforts at regime change and ensure regime survival, nullifying both internal and external threats. A sufficient Northern military provocation could give the Americans a reason to strike at Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear infrastructure. While some of it is hardened, the US could conceivably set back the North’s efforts at least a few years. Someone might hope Iran would take heed too.
The failure of diplomatic efforts may make that attractive to some in Washington. Making it appear a real possibility might also be useful in rousing China to do its best to restrain the North Koreans. The last thing Beijing wants is an American air intervention next door, especially one that might generate large numbers of refugees.
The United States does not need a war on the Korean peninsula either. However it turns out–and there is never a guarantee that things go well in war–it would cause serious damage to relations with China and give the pivot to Asia–intended as a peaceful and diplomatic effort–an entirely different cast. South Korea also has a great deal to lose if things get out of hand: the North can unleash a frightening barrage of artillery on Seoul. Let’s hope the dogs of war are barking and not biting.
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The time to settle is now
Regular readers will find it odd that I recommend a piece by Jerry Gallucci, with whom I often disagree. But this time he has got it mostly right.
While buying a bit of Serb credit with stabs at the EU and US as “misguided” and even “dangerous” and Pristina as “maximalist,” Jerry goes on to reject what Belgrade is asking for in the negotiations over northern Kosovo. The Ahtisaari plan, he suggests, is adequate.
He’s right. Belgrade is the maximalist party in this negotiation, not Pristina, which has realized from the first that reintegration of northern Kosovo will require time and patience as well as improved relations with Belgrade.
Belgrade’s bottom line, as cited by Jerry, requires satisfaction on all these criteria for the Serb association of municipalities:
- whether it would have its own powers (or carry out those given to the municipalities), executive council and assets
- whether it would operate under the law of Kosovo
- whether it would have an elected or delegated assembly
- whether it would have the power to assign and confirm places of residence, determine electoral registers and the composition of a separate court
- whether its decisions would need to be approved by Pristina
- whether there would be a “mechanism” for Serb participation in central government bodies
- whether Kosovo security services would stay out of the north.
Meeting these requirements would not only create a separate Serbian “entity” (like Republika Srpska, the Serb entity within Bosnia) but would also in essence make that entity virtually independent and give it de facto power to block Kosovo’s entry into the European Union by ensuring it could not implement the acquis communitaire on the entity’s territory.
No one in Serbia would imagine that Belgrade could or would agree to such arrangements for the Albanian-majority communities of southern Serbia. There is no reason to expect Pristina to agree to them for Serbian-majority communities in northern Kosovo. Kudos to Jerry for recognizing that this is a road to nowhere.
And more kudos for recognizing, albeit obliquely (the headline writer did it more directly than in Jerry’s text), that the Ahtisaari plan is adequate for purposes of protecting vital Serb interests in northern Kosovo. The sooner Belgrade realizes that the negotiation with Pristina is about how the Ahtisaari plan is to be implemented, not about additional criteria that need to be met, the quicker it will see the EU and US plump for opening accession negotiations. Conditionality has brought the Belgrade/Pristina dialogue as far as it has come. And it will be vital to closing the deal, no matter how much Jerry (and Belgrade) don’t like it.
Given what is happening between the EU and Cyprus, whose banks have handled (shall I say laundered?) a lot of Serb funds over the past two decades, it would be a serious mistake for Belgrade to cause any further delay. The EU has somehow kept open the possibility of beginning accession negotiations with Serbia, despite Belgrade’s continued insistence on claiming sovereignty over all of Kosovo, growing enlargement fatigue and the euro crisis. There is a real possibility the door will slam shut after Croatia’s entry in July. The time to settle on the reintegration of northern Kosovo (and allow Kosovo to join the UN as well as other international bodies) is now.
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The fireman of last resort
It is striking that the first comments on Fred Hof’s Washington Post piece today advocating U.S. support for a “nonsectarian,” opposition government in Syria are negative. The pendulum has swung hard against intervention, humanitarian or not. Americans are not interested in getting involved. They fear getting in deeper than they like and causing problems rather than solving them.
This is not surprising after a more than a decade of fruitless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the more recent intervention in Libya. I would argue that Libya was a relatively successful intervention despite the murder of our ambassador and his colleagues in Benghazi by a relatively small group of extremists. I would also argue that Iraq, while unquestionably not a just or justifiable war given the lack of nuclear weapons (or even a serious nuclear weapons program), is better off without Saddam Hussein. The war in Afghanistan was justified, but botched and now unlikely to have a good outcome. But I am not confident I can convince even my wife, who rolls her eyes knowingly whenever I say these things. Americans are in no mood to try again in Syria to create a relative democracy where a sectarian autocracy has ruled for decades.
The values argument is clear
But the national mood should not be the only factor in determining whether we intervene in Syria. National interests and values should also weigh in the balance. So far as values are concerned, Fred is right: we should be doing what we can to help the Syrian opposition to end a brutal and illegitimate dictatorship. There really is no serious argument here, though of course Fred’s critics are correct to suggest that a democratic outcome is far from guaranteed. Extreme Islamists are playing a strong role in the Syrian revolution and are likely to remain a strong political force once it is over, no matter what we do.
National interests are less clear
Some national interests also weigh in favor of intervention. The fall of Bashar al Asad would certainly be a blow to his sponsors in Iran and his partners in Hizbollah. If our failure to intervene means the war lasts longer, the conflict will become more sectarian and put at risk state structures throughout the Levant. Apart from Syria itself, the spillover could threaten Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, all of which are receiving large numbers of refugees and sending back into Syria fighters of various sectarian and ethnic groups. The Americans worry a lot about Al Qaeda, whose purpose is to recreate an Islamic caliphate. Continued fighting in and around Syria could make something like the caliphate re-emerge, with cataclysmic consequences.
Other national interests weigh against. Our parlous economic and budgetary situation hardly argues for intervention in yet another conflict. President Obama is concerned with keeping the Russians “on side” in support for the Northern Distribution Network, which is vital to American withdrawal from Afghanistan, and in the nuclear negotiations with Iran. He also wants to maintain a credible threat of force against Iran’s nuclear program, which would be difficult to do if the US gets enmired in the Syrian war.
Everything costs
War is not cheap. It generally runs $1 billion and up. By some reckonings, we spent more than a trillion in Iraq, but that was a really expensive eight-year enterprise with lots of military and civilian boots on the ground. No one advocates putting American troops on the ground in Syria.
Humanitarian relief and other aid is not free either, though it costs a lot less than war. We are in the vicinity of $400 million already in Syria and the bills are compounding. I won’t be surprised if the US chips in more than $1 billion by the end of this year. The bill could go considerably higher.
What are we buying? Necessities: food, water, sanitation, shelter, including blankets, cooking stoves and other standard humanitarian relief supplies. But they are going largely to government-controlled communities. While USAID claims it is reaching all vulnerable populations, reports are multiplying of areas outside government control that are getting little or nothing. It is just very difficult to get supplies to all those who need them.
Military options
Is there an alternative? We are already providing intelligence to the opposition, according to the American press. At this point, the main additional options are military. You can call it a no-fly zone if you prefer, but as Jim Dobbins has said we can either give the Syrians the arms they need to take down Bashar al Asad’s aircraft or we can nail them ourselves. The former is war by proxy. The latter is war tout court.
A billion or two in arms or air operations would not be trivial, though I’d be surprised if we got off quite that cheap. In addition, the arms could end up in the wrong hands, which will likely happen no matter who supplies them. No country wants to be the supplier of the shoulder-fired missile that brings down a commercial aircraft. Nor do I think the folks receiving weapons are likely to show much gratitude, though supplying them to relative moderates could conceivably strengthen them in the post-war transition.
I’d be more interested in the “nail the aircraft” option, especially if it included the Scud missiles Bashar has been raining on population centers. Something like this is going to be necessay if the liberated areas are ever to be safe from long-range attack. The sooner it happens, the more likely it is the liberated areas can begin governing themselves, and receiving humanitarian assistance.
We’ve got a mess on our hands in Syria. Allowing it to continue will make things worse. Intervening could also make things worse, but it is likely to accelerate the denouement and tilt the outcome against Bashar. Syria is a house on fire. We can’t be the world’s policeman, but we do need to act as its fireman of last resort.
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