Month: July 2013
Live better live longer
I’m preparing to fly to the Netherlands tonight, so I’m taking the easy way out and offering you this TED talk, which my wife recommended, in lieu of a proper blog post:
Those of you who know me will understand that this is not easy advice for me to take. I do okay on the physical and mental dimensions, but on the emotional and social I’m a laggard. Here’s hoping that you will find it easier than I do to reach out and touch someone!
PS: Yes, there are connections here to war and peace issues.
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Get over it
As I’ve read some off the wall interpretations and reactions to the President’s remarks yesterday about the Trayvon Martin case, I thought I would put up the video. Nothing like the original to make folks identify precisely what they found offensive or ill-founded:
In my way of thinking, the President here is showing himself not only thoughtful but also appropriately sensitive to a wide range of reactions to the case. I can’t imagine why some think he is speaking only for black people, even if he is definitely speaking from his experience as a black man in American. I’m what this society calls “white” and I can assure you he speaks for me: better training for the police, making sure our laws don’t encourage violence, targeted efforts to help young black men, soul-searching for our own biases, and recognition that we’ve come a long way sound like pretty good ideas to me.
Some of the criticism is about gun rights: there are people in our society who not only want the right to defend themselves, which has long been guaranteed, but impunity from prosecution if they don’t try to avoid a confrontation and instead “stand their ground,” which means responding to perceived threat with deadly violence even if there is an alternative. I suppose if I wanted to own a gun I would want to maximize my impunity as well. Imagining what would have happened had Trayvon Martin been armed–as the president suggests–is precisely the right way to convince yourself that this is a road we should not want to go down.
A lot of the criticism is coming from people who claim to be color blind (that’s why they think we don’t need that Voting Rights Act, isn’t it?) and resent the president’s explicit discussion of the racial dimensions of this case. I can’t help but wonder how many of these allegedly color blind people actually voted for a black president. And how many of them didn’t like that Cheerios commercial with the mixed couple. I’ve had more than one acquaintance who voted against Obama congratulate themselves and America on his election. These folks seem convinced that it happened because America didn’t notice he was black. So when he addresses racial issues as a black person they are deeply offended.
But his election did not happen because America was color blind. It happened because people preferred what he offered, because they trusted him more, because his opponents were weak, because young people, blacks and latinos turned out, because he is a thoughtful and well-educated person, and because racial prejudice is less absolute than once it was.
My grandmother would never have voted for a black person for anything. My parents would be delighted he was elected. But none of them was color blind. Nor am I. The president is black. Get over it.
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Washington stretched
It is difficult to see Secretary Kerry’s announcement that Israel and Palestine have agreed tentatively to meet at an unspecified date to talk about talks as worthy of the news coverage it has gotten. The headlines really signify how far the two sides have drifted apart after a three-year negotiating hiatus in their more than six decades of conflict.
Nevertheless, hiding in the New York Times account is a hint of what the deal behind the modest news may be. Kerry it says
…apparently won concessions on the new framework, which American, Israeli and Palestinian officials said would allow Washington to declare the 1967 prewar borders as the basis for the talks — along with the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state — but allow Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas to distance themselves from those terms.
This is clever, if ironic. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu last year excoriated President Obama for talking about the 1967 prewar borders. Now he is agreeing to American allegiance to that idea as the basis for the talks, along with American recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, one of his favorite hobby horses. Not a bad deal from Netanyahu’s perspective.
Not too bad from Palestinian President Abbas’ either. He wants the 1967 prewar borders to be the basis, so as to ensure that any divergence from them gives the Palestinians at least quantitatively equivalent swaps. He also gets release of some Palestinian prisoners, though it is unclear yet how many and who they will be. The hard pill for him to swallow is recognition of Israel as an explicitly Jewish state, but even that has a silver lining: Israel needs to ensure its Jewishness by enabling the creation of a Palestinian state. Otherwise the demographic expansion of Palestinians is a serious long-term threat.
There is of course still a long way to go before an overall settlement is reached: specific land swaps, Jerusalem, security, the right of return for Palestinians. But we’ll get a pretty good idea of whether this initiative is going anywhere if Israel begins to limit Jewish settlement activity. That is difficult for Netanyahu, as he has within his governing coalition people who want to retain the entire West Bank. It is also his “best alternative to a negotiated agreement” (BATNA), as he can pursue it unilaterally (even if ultimately it would create an Israel that is neither Jewish nor democratic).
The Palestinian BATNA was pursuing membership in international organizations as a non-UN member state. Palestine succeeded at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where the Americans are refusing to pay dues as a result. This may lead to suspension of US voting rights this fall, something my cultured and well-educated friends think is a really bad idea. However that works out, it appears the Palestinians have already decided to go slow in applying for other memberships, under a lot of pressure from the Americans and presumably the Europeans as well. US suspension from the World Health Organization would have many more practical and detrimental ramifications than suspension from UNESCO, which will also hamper many good programs.
More power to John Kerry if he has managed to put together a negotiation on the basis of 1967 prewar borders and Israel as a Jewish state. But even getting this far seems to have made Washington ignore what is going on in Syria and Egypt, both of which need more American care and attention. Our civilian capacities to conduct foreign policy are seriously stretched.
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Egypt, the US and Israel
These are the (slightly amended) talking points I used today in a presentation about Egypt to a pro-Israel American group:
1. I’ll start with the bottom line: I am not optimistic about Egypt’s revolution finding its way to stability or democracy, objectives I would certainly like it to reach.
2. Egypt is a big, complicated, diverse and poor country that simply has not found a consensus on the rules of the road.
3. My colleague Marc Lynch calls this Calvinball, which is a game never played the same way twice in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. The rules are constantly changing.
4. I think of it a bit like Cairo traffic: everyone aggressively doing his own thing, to the detriment of the collective outcome.
5. The big divide is now between the coup—led by the army, the justice system and secularists with support from Saudi Arabia and the UAE—and the Qatari supported Muslim Brotherhood, with the Nour party Salafists somewhere in the middle.
6. If this divide is not bridged, I still anticipate the new revolution will proceed with revising the constitution and holding elections, at a pace forced in part by international pressure.
7. But that won’t fix much unless the Brotherhood rejoins the political game and agrees to play by democratic rules, which it has refused to do so far. Legitimacy depends on participation.
8. If the Brotherhood does rejoin, it may well capture a big part of electorate, which in six months or a year won’t be any happier with the economy and social conditions than it was when Morsi was in power.
9. So Egypt is damned if Brotherhood participates, and it is damned if the Brotherhood doesn’t participate.
10. I’d much prefer to see the Brotherhood inside the tent peeing out rather than outside the tent peeing in, but I can’t pretend to predict which way it will go, as most predictions prove incorrect.
11. What does this all mean for the United States and Israel?
12. Egypt is important to the United States, because it is the center of gravity of the Arab world.
13. If the revolution moves definitively in a democratic direction, that will show the way for Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and eventually Syria.
14. If it fails to move in a democratic direction, the cause in those countries will not be lost, but the odds of success will decline.
15. For Israel, the question is less about democracy and more about security. Morsi was not threatening the treaty, but his slipshod regime was nevertheless bad for security, especially in the Sinai.
16. We’ll have to see whether the present regime will do any better. The Egyptian military seems already to be destroying the tunnels into Gaza, something the judiciary ordered some time ago.
17. I assume this is welcome in Israel. The emergence in Egypt of anti-Palestinian sentiment is likely welcome there as well, though I hasten to add that anti-Israeli sentiment is also strong.
18. In any event, I see nothing to be gained at the moment by ending or suspending US aid to Egypt, which if the pledges are fulfilled will have ample cash from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
19. Influence flows in the same direction as money. You may have a one-time impact from shutting off the money flow, but then influence will rapidly decline. Relationships will be seriously damaged.
20. Better in my view to use the leverage the assistance provides to push for what the United States wants: an inclusive democratic outcome. Assistance should be conditional.
21. Will inclusive democracy in Egypt be good for Israel? That depends on which Israel you support.
22. It is clear that any truly democratic regime in Egypt, and in other Arab countries, will be more sympathetic to the Palestinians than the autocracies, which talked a good line but did little.
23. At the same time, the Arab street seems for the moment more interested in personal safety, jobs and bread than the plight of the Palestinians, so resources will flow to those higher priorities.
24. That said, the Egyptian revolution is taking a much more nationalist turn. I imagine this nationalism will include more belligerence against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
25. I do not anticipate it will include renunciation of the Egypt/Israel peace treaty, mainly because the Egyptian military does not want the burden of the resulting security requirements.
26. For Israel the greater threat comes from instability in Egypt. If the Egyptian state continues to weaken, it may have real difficulty controlling extremists in Sinai and elsewhere.
27. Cairo’s political influence in Gaza is also likely to decline, since Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate.
28. Which brings me back to where I started: a stable and democratic outcome is unlikely. Both Israelis and Americans are going to need to learn to manage a much more fluid and uncertain situation than in the past.
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It’s Trayvon Martin’s fault
Murhaf Jouejati, a leading light of the Syrian opposition, complained on Twitter:
I watched ABC “Worldnews” tonight. Despite today’s killing of tens of Syrian civilians by the Assad regime, ABC reported nothing about Syria.
He added:
NBC also had nothing on Syria. Still wondering why American public opinion is so uninformed?
At least in the United States, the horrors of Homs and Aleppo seem to have been driven not only off the front pages but out of the press entirely, presumably because the trial of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin used up all the ink (and electrons). The exception was this morning’s New York Times, which has a good overview of the Syrian regime’s recent military successes.
I confess to my own fascination with the trial, which is like a Rohrschach test: if you see race as a factor, then the inkblot points toward conviction for something; if you don’t, you might agree with the jurors who acquitted someone who profiled, followed, quarreled with and shot an unarmed seventeen-year-old. How the prosecutors failed to anticipate the racial factor is a mystery to me. And why the press calls a self-appointed vigilante ready to use his firearm a “neighborhood watch volunteer” I cannot fathom.
Though far from our shores, the plight of Homs really is more heinous than this unsuccessful prosecution, which allowed a single sociopath to go free. Those who are watching see mass murder of a civilian population, including even those trying to mediate. In Aleppo, people are starving. Sociopath Bashar al Asad is killing upwards of one hundred Travon Martins, or his parents, every day. Asad’s mostly Alawite and Shia (including Hizbollah) collaborators are busy chasing the Sunni population north and presumably plan to fill in with Alawites and other minorities whenever conditions allow.
The shape of things in Syria is becoming all too clear. The regime is seeking to establish a robust corridor linking Damascus to the relatively concentrated populations of Alawites in the west, which is conveniently adjacent to Lebanon’s Shia population (and Hizbollah fighters). Asad seems intent on pushing north as far as he can: first to Homs, then Aleppo if possible. But his supply lines will be getting longer and help from Lebanon less convenient. At some point the confrontation lines will likely stop moving north, at which point both opposition and regime will turn to their own rear areas and try to mop up any continuing resistance and ethnically cleansing as much as they think necessary.
The result will be de facto, partly sectarianized, partition, likely with opposition-controlled areas both south and north of the regime’s main axis from Damascus to Tartous and Latakia and extending in the east to Deir Azzour. The opposition will have supply lines to Turkey in the north, Iraqi Kurdistan in the east and Jordan in the south. The regime will continue to depend on Russian and Iranian supplies shipped mainly to Tartous.
This partition could persist for a long time. It is now forgotten, but during the Bosnian war the confrontation lines moved little for 3.5 years. Only with the American bombing did the Croat and Muslim forces tip the balance of war and begin to sweep through western Bosnia. A soft partition with fairly clear confrontation lines could likewise last for years in Syria, provided both sides are able to maintain their international supply lines.
This kind of persistent stalemate would push both sides in more radical, sectarian directions. The opposition, many of whose most aggressive fighters are militant Islamists, will likely move more in that direction. Moderates do not fare well in polarized situations. The regime will continue to claim the mantle of secularism and multiethnicity, but in fact its core is increasingly Alawite and Shia, with Christians, Druze and lots of Sunnis trying to duck, or sit on the fence, or whatever you want to call what people do when fear outweighs the desire for freedom.
The American jilting of the Syrian rebels may seem the easiest way out to an Administration that is taking retrenchment seriously. But it isn’t going to be cheap. US expenses for Syria, mostly humanitarian aid, are climbing close to $1 billion. Next year could easily double that figure, especially if the other states (Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq) in the Levant start to collapse. You know: a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon we are talking about real money. I’d prefer we worry about the people, but if that doesn’t grab high-level attention maybe the expenditures will.
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On to the next big thing
As I am going to be impolite further on, I’ll say first that I enjoyed yesterday’s CSIS conference on rethinking civilian stabilization and reconstruction. It opened with IRD President Arthur Keys offering a shopping list of good things, among which:
- civilian/military cooperation
- quick impact
- the need to be flexible, nimble and adaptable
- monitoring and evaluation of impact
- local engagement
- capacity building
- protection of vulnerable populations
Citing David Petraeus, he made the very good point that not preparing for stabilization and reconstruction won’t make the need go away.
Bob Lamb was a bit more edgy: the need won’t go away, but our civilian institutions are weak, despite the fact that they are the primary means by which the US government reacts to international contingencies. We know development needs to be led by locals because donors don’t know the terrain. Why don’t we do it? Then he asked the question he would repeat, without getting a satisfactory answer, throughout the day: why have our institutions not adopted the lessons learned? There is something about the political economy of our own institutions that prevents it, he suggested. There are also new directions we should be pursuing: women as peacemakers, geospatial data made widely available, and private sector action that supports stabilization efforts. The American people should not lose faith, but the “S&R” community needs to do things that will justify continued support.
In David Ignatius’ view, the withdrawals of our expeditionary armies from Iraq and Afghanistan create a power vacuum. We need new, civilian ways to project power. This is one of the most important challenges of our time. AID merely contracts out, USIP is not properly an instrument of national power, CSO (the Conflict and Stabilization Ops part of the State Department) is too small, the CIA is going back to its proper intelligence role and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are having trouble operating in non-permissive environments. The military has been used to fill the gap, but that won’t work in Egypt or Syria, which is a country on the verge of breakup.
Responding to David, Jim Dobbins underlined that all 20 international interventions since 1989 show positive outcomes: 16 have had peaceful outcomes (and all are showing progress in that direction) and all show economic growth, movement towards democracy, and sharp improvements in human development. This is especially the case where the entry of foreign troops has been consensual and the country in question of modest size. Ethnic diversity and poverty do not reduce the success rate. The keys to success lie in gaining the cooperation of neighbors and in coopting local elites. It is important to keep things in perspective: we’ve had a good deal of success.
On Afghanistan, Jim asks how the US can shape the political transition there. The international community will focus quite properly on whether the 2014 elections are free and fair. But the Afghans will focus on the outcome. What is needed is a new leader who, like Karzai, manages to create a patronage network and cobble together a cross-ethnic coalition that puts forward a multi-ethnic slate of candidates.
Whatever justifiable concerns there might be about corruption in such a patronage network, it is important to remember the progress Afghanistan has made on health, education and telecommunications. On indices of democracy and corruption, Afghanistan ranks more or less in the same league with neighboring countries. It takes time for formal institutions to work against against family, tribal and ethnic relationships.
As for our own institutions, Dobbins underlines that their inadequacy has been most apparent when US military forces are losing, which is when they call for civilian help. Security is vital, so adequate stabilization forces are the first requirement. AID, he suggested, should be AIR(reconstruction and)D. State should direct an enhanced civilian capacity. Where the United States has engaged in reconstruction, it is generally appreciated, but we clearly still have a problem in Egypt, Pakistan and in much of the rest of the Muslim world.
I skipped the mid-day sessions on Colombia, Liberia and South Sudan, so I can’t tell you what happened at those. But I was back in the room for Rob Jenkins, who leads AID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, which is certainly one of the stars in the US government’s firmament. Rob thought a lot had been accomplished in recent decades: a discipline has been created, even if we don’t really know what to call it. Stabilization is too low a bar and reconstruction is not really adequate. What we need now is a more data-driven process, though he was quick to admit that we can only make a contribution to preventing bad things from happening, not prove that we did.
That said, respect for local needs, engagement to encourage ownership, and local governance are clearly important. Transitions are generational (20-40 years), but Congress limits OTI’s engagement to three. The US government is more together than in the past. AID has people at all the combatant commands. Prevention is getting priority.
In response to Lamb’s constant question (why are the lessons learned not institutionalized?), Rob thought the fault lay with insufficient funding for contingencies and risk aversion. Experimentation, speed and agility are important, but everyone is worried about their next audit. Some lessons are overlearned.
CSO assistant secretary Rick Barton wrapped up this fine day with four points:
- We need a new optic: we are no longer doing post-conflict reconstruction as in Iraq and Afghanistan but rather supporting popular revolts in terribly violent conditions requiring greater speed and capacity than we’ve got. Military intervention is not where it’s at. It’s a golden moment for civilians.
- We also need organizational reform: policy and implementation need to be closer together, enabling earlier results. There needs to be a center of gravity for decisionmaking, not in the National Security Council, that takes responsibility and ensures coherence.
- Our analytical lens needs to be broader: we need to be talking with broader swathes of society, including silent majorities. Intelligence is too often driven by those with big budgets rather than the real needs.
- We need to expand local ownership, which is our only chance for success. To get out of interventions we need to pay attention to local priorities.
The big thing, Rick averred, is to appreciate the enormity of the challenges.
I do, and this event affirmed my view that no one from inside the system can answer Bob Lamb’s good question: why don’t we institutionalize the lessons? I’m afraid that the answer is the institutions we have are not learning machines. They weren’t established as such, and they have not developed in that direction. No one in them is rewarded for applying lessons learned. Unlike the military, where lessons learned get recycled to field commanders at times within 24 hours, State Department and USAID make sure the process is so slow no one will be paying attention by the time the lessons learned are formulated. On to the next big thing.
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